\ARY-.KAm 


. 


KITTY   IS  TROUBLED. 


THE  SECOND  YEAR 


O  F   TH  E 


LOOK-ABOUT   CLUB 


BY 
)Wl 

MARY    E.    BAMFORD 

Author  of  "  MY  LAND  AND  WATER  FRIENDS,"  and  "  THE  LOOK-ABOUT  CLUB. 


ILLUSTRATED  BY  HIRAM  P.  BARNES 


BOSTON 
D     LOTHROP     COMPANY 

WASHINGTON   STREET   OPPOSITE  BROMFIELD 

.0*  CALU,  u,^.  LOS  ^ 


COPYRIGHT,  1889, 

BY 
D.  LOTHROP  COMPAWT. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   I. 

KITTIE'S  TRIAL 17 

CHAPTER   II. 

THE   SEVEN    DIVISIONS 35 

CHAPTER    III. 

THE    HYDROPHILID^E 46 

CHAPTER   IV. 

THE   CLUB'S    PAMPHLET 59 

A  Raven's  Communications  ........  59 

A  New  Acquaintance '.  67 

The  Work  of  the  Walk  ing- Sticks 71 

The  Folks  that  Lived  in  a  Jelly  Glass 77 

The  Memories  of  a  Hedgehog        .......  84 

A  Serpent's  Speech 90 

A  Cicada's  Life 94 

A  Riddle  and  its  Answer        .        .         .         .        .         .         .         .  101 

A  Chipmunk's  Chatterings     .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  103 

A  Voice  from  a  Hole  in  the  Ground       ...  106 

Why  Cats  Wear  Whiskers.     Poem         .         .         .         .        .        .  112 


2125992 


12  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   V. 

ON   THE  SEA-BEACH 124 

CHAPTER  VI. 
ALICE'S  DOINGS I^g 

CHAPTER  VII. 

A    TALK  ............  i^g 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  CLUB'S   STORY-NIGHT         ...  ...  162 


LIST  OF    ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Kittie  is  troubled Frontis. 

Blind  fish 26 

Proteus          ............  28 

Blind  craw-fish       .  30 

Al's  blackboard 36 

Two  brave  little  people 38 

Being  useful 38 

Making  the  red  tidy 39 

Alice  answers  the  ring  ...........  39 

An  alarming  visitor        .......  .  40 

Quite  disheartening 41 

The  new  member 44 

/ 

Small  members  of  Hydrophilidae 47 

Hydrophilus  Piceus 48 

The  metamorphosis  of  Hydrophilus  Piceus  of  Europe  ....  50 

Egg  of  Hydrophilidas 52 

Same  egg  in  different  position 52 

Eggs  of  little  Hydrophilidse S3 

Egg  cocoons  of  Hydrophilus  Piceus  of  Europe 57 

The  raven 60 

Loon 63 

The  magpie 64 

13 


i4  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The  plover 65 

Larvae  of  whirligig  beetle 67 

Whirligig  beetle 67 

Scorpion-bug 68 

Brazilian  whirligig .  69 

Ranatra  fusca 69 

Porrorhynchus       ...........  70 

Diapheromera  Femorata        .........  71 

Eggs  of  Diapheromera  Femorata           .         .         .         .         .         .         .  72 

Eggs,  natural  size 73 

Full-grown  walking-sticks      .........  75 

"Water-flea" ...  78 

The  Arborescent  Vorticella  .........  79 

Cypris  Unifasciata 80 

Daphnia  Pulex 80 

Melicerta  Ringens         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  81 

Fresh-water  polyps        ..........  83 

European  hedgehog  and  little  ones        .......  85 

Sound-producing  quills           .........  88 

Brazilian  tree  porcupine                  ........  89 

Seventeen-year  cicada            .........  95 

Leaping  cicada 97 

Cicada  towers        ...                  .......  99 

Serpula  Contortrylicata          . 101 

Serpula  Tubularia 102 

Serpula  Spiralis .  103 

Serpula  Tubularia ...  103 

Striped  squirrel 105 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS.  15 

Carabus  Adonis 107 

"  I  am  going  to  be  a  ground-beetle  " 107 

Damaster  Blaptoidas     ... 108 

Mormolyce  Phyllodes 109 

Larvae  of  a  ground-beetle       . in 

Going  to  her  friend's 113 

Helping  herself 114 

Objects  of  sympathy      .         .         .         . 115 

"  No,  I  cannot  relieve  your  bad  children,"  said  she        .         .         .         .  116 

American  Mantis  ...........  118 

Eggs  of  Mantis  Carolina        .........  119 

Capsule  attached  to  twig        . 120 

Barrell  eggs  of  the  harlequin  cabbage-bug 121 

Eggs  of  tortoise-shell  butterfly,  gadfly  and  bed-bug        .         .         .         .  122 

Chrysopa  Oculata  and  eggs  .         . 122 

A  view  of  Pacific  grove 125 

"  I'm  Wobbie  !  "    ...  .128 

Sea-urchins 129 

Chiton  Spinosus .  130 

Chiton  Magnificus 131 

Masticating  apparatus  of  sea-urchin 132 

Echinus  Mamillatus 133 

Grooved  top-shell 134 

•"  Ear-shell  " 137 

One  of  the  artists           ..........  140 

Triton 149 

Eggs  of  water-boatman 150 

Larvae  of  bees 151 


16  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Pupae  of  bees x^x 

Ploteres .         .         .         .         .  jr? 

Halobates      .         .         . .  jc? 

Ranatra  Asiatica  .         .        ...         .         .         .         .         .         .  ice 

Great  shielded  grasshopper  .        x.        .        .         ...  157 

A  spiracle      . .         .         ...  ^g. 

Larva  of  rat-tailed  fly    .         .         .         .         .         .  .         .  Irg. 

Pupa  of  Eristalis !60. 

A  species  of  Helophilus !60. 

The  daily  visitor    ...........  i6c 

A  friend  in  need  .......  .  167 

Mrs.  Whitehead !68 

"Regardless  of  respect "       . !6 


THE   SECOND   YEAR 
OF  THE   LOOK-ABOUT  CLUB 


THE    SECOND  YEAR    OF 


THE  LOOK-ABOUT  CLUB 


CHAPTER    I. 
KITTIE'S    TRIAL. 

"  WHAT  is  the  matter  with  Kittie  ?  "  asked  Al,  one 
day.  "Seems  to  me  she  cries  every  little  while.  And 
she  used  to  stand  so  high  at  school ;  but  she  doesn't 
any  more.  She  isn't  getting  sick,  is  she  ?  " 

"  I  know  what's  the  matter  at  school,"  answered 
Blanche,  as  she  rubbed  her  slate  clean  with  a  sponge. 
"  She  can't  see  the  things  on  the  blackboard,  the  way 
the  other  scholars  can." 

"  What,  the  figures  ?  "  asked  Al ;  "  why  in  the  world 
can't  she,  I'd  like  to  know?  Her  desk  is  away  up 
front.  She  doesn't  have  to  look  nearly  as  far  as  I  do 
to  see  the  figures." 

"  I  know  it,"  said  Blanche.     "  That's  the  reason  why 


i8  KITTIES   TRIAL. 

Miss  Hardy  gave  her  that  seat,  because  Kittle  couldn't 
see  from  where  she  sat  before.  But  Kittie  says  she 
can't  see  now." 

"  That's  funny,"  said  Al. 

Blanche  looked  grave. 

"  I  heard  papa  talking  about  it,"  said  she,  "  and  he  is 
going  to  take  Kittie  to  the  city  to  see  about  her  eyes." 

The  truth  was,  that,  when  Kittie  was  very  young  she 
learned  to  read,  and  became  so  fond  of  this  occupation 
that  she  spent  most  of  her  time  with  her  books. 

Mrs.  Perry  would  say,  "  Now,  don't  hold  your  book 
too  near  your  eyes,  Kittie,"  but  Kittie  was  generally 
too  much  absorbed  in  the  stories  to  heed  the  caution. 

So  things  had  gone  on,  until,  now  that  Kittie  was 
twelve  years  old,  objects  had  gradually  become  dimmer 
and  dimmer,  until  she  could  not  see  her  father  down 
the  road  when  he  was  coming  home,  nor  the  minister's 
house  from  the  window  where  she  used  to  see  it,  and 
when  she  looked  at  the  Big  Dipper  at  night  she  could 
not  find  as  many  stars  in  it  as  Al  and  Blanche  could, 
and  so  Mrs.  Perry  had  begun  to  fear  that  Kittie  would 
be  near-sighted. 


KITTIES   TRIAL.  19 

At  school  matters  were  trying  indeed.  The  teacher 
was  very  kind,  and  when  examination  days  came 
around  she  would  write  off  all  the  examples  on  a  piece 
of  paper  and  give  it  to  Kittie,  because  she  could  not, 
like  the  other  scholars,  read  what  was  written  on  the 
board.  Still  Kittie  was  very  unhappy,  and  cried  a 
great  deal  about  her  eyes. 

One  day  Kittie  came  home  crying.  Her  dearest 
friend,  Nellie  Hunt,  said  she  would  not  play  with  her 
any  more,  because,  the  day  before,  when  Kittie  had 
been  at  the  post-office,  she  had  walked  straight  past 
Nellie  and  had  not  smiled  nor  bowed  nor  even  looked 
at  her. 

It  took  all  Mrs.  Perry's  and  Aunt  Nan's  ingenuity 
to  comfort  Kittie  that  night,  but  Mrs.  Perry  told  her 
she  must  beg  Nellie  to  excuse  her  on  account  of  not 
having  seen  who  it  was. 

Things  went  on  from  bad  to  worse,  however,  and  one 
day  Mr.  Perry  took  Kittie  and  went  to  the  city. 
Blanche  worried  all  day  long. 

"  You  don't  s'pose  they'll  do  anything  to  Kittie's 
eyes,  do  you  ?  "  she  asked  her  mother. 


20  KITTIES    TRIAL. 

•v 

"  Nothing  very  dreadful,  I  think,"  answered  her 
mother,  reassuringly. 

But  the  day  seemed  long  to  Blanche,  and  when  even- 
ing came  she  was  waiting  at  the  front  gate,  and  the 
moment  the  two  figures  appeared  in  the  distance,  away 
she  ran  to  meet  them. 

"  Did  they  hurt  you  ? "  cried  she,  as  she  ran  up. 
"Why,  Kittie  Perry,  how  funny  you  do  look!"  For 
there,  adorning  Kittie' s  smiling  face,  perched  upon  her 
little  nose,  were  a  pair  of  gold-rimmed  spectacles. 

"  Do  they  look  funny  ?  "  laughed  Kittie.  "  I  didn't 
know  but  maybe  they  did  ;  but,  Blanche,  I  can  see  lots 
—  just  as  well  as  I  ever  could.  Why,  when  we  went 
on  the  boat  to-day  I  could  see  the  little  waves  ever 
so  far  off." 

"  Are  you  going  to  wear  them  all  the  time  ?  How 
do  you  keep  them  on  ?  "  asked  Blanche ;  and  Kittie  had 
to  show  the  little  gold  bows  with  knobs  on  the  end, 
that  went  behind  her  ears. 

Kittie  was  so  much  pleased  that  she  could  hardly 
wipe  her  dishes  that  night,  she  was  in  such  a  hurry  to 
go  out-doors  and  look  at  everything.  / 


KITTIES    TRIAL.  21 

All  the  world  looked  different  to  her.  When  it  grew 
dark  she  was  delighted  to  see  the  stars  shining  so 
brightly ;  and  she  discovered  that  she  had  been  mis- 
taken, and  that  Al  and  Blanche  were  right  about  the 
number  of  stars  in  the  Big  Dipper. 

When  Kittie  went  back  to  school  again  the  next  day, 
her  schoolmates  stared  at  her  spectacles  a  little,  but 
they 'did  not  say  much,  and  all  seemed  glad  that  she 
could  see  again.  That  is,  all  but  Tom  Finnigan,  a  big 
boy  who  always  seemed  to  delight  in  making  people 
miserable. 

"  Halloo,  Grandmother! "  shouted  he  when  the  first 
recess  came. 

"  Hush,"  said  Carrie  Benton,  "  you  mustn't  plague 
Kittie.  You  know  she  has  felt  'badly  enough  about  her 
eyes." 

But,  all  the  same,  Tom  persisted  in  trying  to  annoy 
the  spectacled  scholar ;  and  he  succeeded  so  well  that 
shortly  Kittie  became  almost  as  miserable  as  she  had 
been  before  she  had  her  glasses. 

"  Thanksgiving's  coming,"  called  out  Blanche  one 
day,  as  Kittie  came  in  from  school. 


22  KITTIE'S    TRIAL. 

"  I  don't  care,"  said  Kittie  crossly.  "  I  don't  see 
what  I've  got  to  be  thankful  for,  if  I  must  have  these 
eyes  always." 

Mrs.  Perry,  in  the  next  room,  heard  what  Kittie  said, 
but  did  not  think  it  best  to  say  anything  just  then. 
When  Mr  Perry  came  home  that  night,  however,  she 
told  him  that  something  must  be  done  to  make  Kittie 
feel  more  contented. 

"  Let's  take  her  up  to  the  Blind  Asylum  and  show 
her  the  scholars  there,"  suggested  Mr.  Perry.  "  Per- 
haps when  she  sees  so  many  worse  off  than  herself,  she 
will  think  that  her  eyes  are  worth  something,  after  all." 

So,  the  Saturday  before  Thanksgiving,  Mr.  Perry 
took  his  wife  and  Kittie  and  drove  two  or  three  miles 
to  the  asylum. 

A  servant  answered  the  door-bell  and  showed  them 
into  the  parlor.  The  principal  came  down  in  a  few 
minutes,  and  Mr.  Perry  asked  if  they  could  look  over 
the  buildings. 

"  Certainly,"  said  the  principal,  and  called  a  blind 
girl,  about  sixteen  years  old,  to  lead  the  visitors  around 
and  show  them  the  rooms. 


KITTIES    TRIAL.  23 

Out  in  the  hall  were  two  or  three  little  blind  boys 

standing  by  the  door.     Kittie  asked  one  of  them  how 

• 

he  became  blind,  and  the  little  fellow  tried  t£  tell  her, 
but,  overcome  by  his  young  visitor's  sympathy,  he 
broke  down  crying,  and  Kittie  cried  with  him.  In  fact, 
long  before  the  tour  of  the  buildings  had  been  made, 
Kittie  had  seen  so  many  of  the  poor  children  and  heard 
so  many  pitiful  stories  that  she  began  to  think  she  was 
one  of  the  most  fortunate  of  mortals  to  have  any  sight 
at  all. 

In  a  room  in  which  were  a  large  number  of  blind 
children,  one  of  the  boys  was  playing  beautifully  on  a 
piano.  The  principal  told  Mr.  Perry  that  the  scholars 
were  fond  of  music  and  learned  very  readily,  some 
being  quite  good  singers. 

The  blind  girl  who  showed  the  party  over  the  build- 
ings did  not  have  to  move  carefully,  as  Kittie  would 
have  supposed,  but  walked  quickly  through  the  rooms 
and  halls  like  one  who  could  see  her  way. 

They  visited  the  large  bedrooms  with  their  rows  of 
little  white  beds  ;  then  the  girl  took  them  to  the  library, 
where  she  lifted  a  large  Bible  down  from  its  shelf  and 


24  KITTIES    TRIAL. 

opened  the  book  to  show  Kittie  the  raised  letters  with 
which  the  blind  read.  Mr.  Perry  asked  the  girl  to  read 
some  verses  to  him,  and  she  put  her  fingers  on  the 
letters  and  read  as  easily  as  a  person  could  with  eyes. 

It  was  time  to  go,  so  Kittie  said  good-by  to  her 
blind  friends  and  went  away,  promising  to  come  and 
see  them  again  some  time. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Perry  did  not  say  anything  to  Kittie, 
but  thought  they  would  wait  and  see  what  impression 
her  visit  had  made  upon  her. 

Thanksgiving  Day  came,  and  the  family  all  went  to 
church  to  hear  the  sermon.  That  night  Blanche  said 
to  Kittie,  "  The  minister  said  this  morning  that  we 
must  all  be  thankful,  but  I  don't  suppose  he  meant 
you,  'cause  you  have  to  wear  spectacles." 

"  Yes,  he  did  mean  me,  too,"  said  Kittie,  as  she  laid 
a  wish-bone  up  on  a  shelf  to  dry,  "  and  I've  got  ever  so 
much  to  be  thankful  for,  Blanche  Perry.  I  guess  you 
would  think  so  if  you'd  seen  all  those  blind  children. 
You  won't  catch  me  complaining  any  more  about  my 
eyes,  if  I  have  to  wear  specs  as  long  as  I  live." 

And,  indeed,  no  more  murmurings  on  that  account 


KITTIES    TRIAL.  25 

were  heard  in  the  Perry  household,  for  if  ever  for  the 
moment  Kittie  felt  like  complaining,  a  little  blind  face 
rose  up  before  her  and  she  seemed  to  hear  again  that 
childish  voice  saying,  "  Oh  !  I  wish  I  could  see.  I  wish 
I  could  see  the  least  little  bit ! " 

The  club,  at  Aunt  Nan's  suggestion,  held  a  "  Blind 
Night,"  on  which  blind  animals  were  to  be  talked 
about. 

"  I  have  been  acquainted  with  only  one  blind  thing 
in  my  life,"  said  Grandmamma,  as  the  meeting  opened, 
"  and  that  was  a  poor  little  canary  that  I  had  when  a 
child.  His  name  was  Twitters.  I  think  his  blindness 
was  caused  by  old  age.  But,  if  Twitters  was  blind, 
he  was  not  stupid.  Whenever  anybody  would  put  a 
bit  of  chickweed  or  a  piece  of  apple  into  any  part  of 
his  cage,  Twitters  would  fly  straight  to  the  very  spot 
to  find  out  what  was  going  on.  He  did  not  need  any 
eyes  to  tell  him  which  way  to  go,  but  went  to  the  very 
spot  at  once.  Sometimes  Twitters  would  sit  and  sing, 
and  it  seemed  sad  to  see  the  little  blind  bird  doing 
his  best  to  be  cheerful." 

"  What  became  of  him  ?  "  asked  Kittie. 


26 


KITTIES    TRIAL. 


"  One  morning,  during  a  very  cold  winter,  I  came 
downstairs  and  went  to  Twitters'  cage  to  bid  him  good- 
morning.  But,  alas  !  for  poor  little  Twitters.  The  cold 
night  had  been  too  much  for  him,  and  he  lay  stiff  and 
dead  in  the  bottom  of  the  cage." 

"  What  did  you  do  with  him  ?  "  asked  Blanche. 
"  I  buried  him  under  an  old  tree,"  said  Grandmamma. 
Blanche  drew  her  stool  a  little  nearer  and  laid  her 
hand  sympathetically  on  Grandmamma's  lap. 

"  And  did  you 
feel  badly  ?  "  asked 
she.  "  As  badly  as 

•BL'NDfijh-  Kit  tie  and  I  did 

over  the  rabbits  ?  " 

"  Yes ;  I  think  I  did,"  said  Grandmamma,  smiling 
at  the  little  questioner. 

"  Now,  it's  papa's  turn,"  said  Al,  and  Mr.  Perry  called 
them  all  to  come  to  the  light  and  see  a  picture  in  a 
book  he  held.  It  was  a  picture  of  a  blind  fish. 

"  Where  do  such  fishes  as  that  live,  papa  ?  "  asked 
Blanche. 

"  In  Mammoth  Cave,"  answered  her  father.     "  They 


KIT  TIE'S    TRIAL.  27 

are  supposed  to  be  found  in  all  underground  rivers 
flowing  through  the  limestone  region  of  the  United 
States,  and  they  have  often  been  found  in  wells." 

"  Are  they  blind  all  their  lives  ?  "  asked  Kittie. 

"  People  suppose  so,"  said  her  father.  "  As  far  as 
people  know,  the  baby  fishes  are  blind  as  well  as  the 
bigger  ones.  Once  in  a  while  one  is  found  that  can 
see.  But  do  you  remember,  Kittie,  how  quick  to  hear 
and  touch  anything  some  of  those  blind  children  \vere 
at  the  asylum  ?  " 

"  Yes,  indeed,"  said  Kittie.  "  I  couldn't  have  walked 
so  fast  with  my  eyes  shut  as  that  blind  girl  did." 

"  Well,"  said  Mr.  Perry,  "  that  is  the  way  with  these 
blind  fish.  The  sense  of  hearing  and  touch  is  so 
acute  that  they  are  very  active.  Mud-fishes  live  in  the 
waters  of  Mammoth  Cave,  too,  and  these  blind  fish 
will  rush  after  them  and  catch  and  eat  them,  although 
the  mud-fishes  have  eyes." 

"  How  do  the  blind  fish  catch  them,  then  ?  "  asked  Al. 

"  Why,  you  see,"  said  his  father,  "  the  blind  fish  have 
a  very  acute  sense  of  touch,  while  the  mud-fish  is  rather 
stupid  in  this  respect,  and  so  the  mud-fish  is  always 


28  KITTIES    TRIAL. 

bumping  against  something  in  the  dark,  and  that  gives 
the  blind  fish  a  chance  to  catch  up  and  capture  the 
mud-fish." 

"  What  funny  picture  have  you  there,  Aunt  Nan  ? " 
said  Al,  as  he  caught  sight  of  a  drawing 
in  his  aunt's  lap. 

"  It  is  called  a  Proteus,"  said  Aunt 
Nan,  as  she  held  the  picture  so  that  all 
could  see  it. 

"  Is  the  creature  named  after  the  old 
Greek  god,  Proteus?  "  asked  Mr.  Perry. 
"  I  suppose  so,"  said  Aunt  Nan. 
"  Who  was  the  old  Greek,  papa  ?  "  asked 
Kittie. 

"  A  sort  of  sea  god  that  the  Greeks  be- 
lieved in,"  said  her  father.  "  They  had  a 
story  that  this  sea-god  could  prophesy 
things  to  come,  and  that  he  lived  in  the  Carpathian 
Sea  and  slept  on  the  shore.  If  found  and  asked  a  ques- 
tion about  the  future,  he  always  refused  to  give  an 
answer  ;  if  the  person  grasped  him  to  hold  him,  he  would 
turn  into  different  shapes,  hoping  to  get  out  of  reach." 


KITTIE'S    TRIAL.  29 

"Is  your  Proteus  blind,  Aunt  Nan?"  asked  Kittie. 

"  Nearly,"  said  her  aunt.  "  It  is  found  in  the  caves 
of  Carniola,  in  the  southwest  part  of  Austria.  I  was 
reading  the  other  day  a  book  by  Professor  Karl  Semper 
of  the  University  of  Wiirzburg,  and  he  said  that  he 
had  kept  a  family  of  these  creatures  for  four  years,  and 
he  was  sure  that  they  could  tell  the  difference  between 
light  and  darkness.  But  he  did  not  believe  that  they 
could  see  things  clearly,  because  their  eyes  are  very 
poor  and  are  entirely  covered  with  skin." 

"  I  think  they  must  see  about  as  well  as  the  Austra- 
lian blind  snakes  do,"  said  Mrs.  Perry.  "  They  live  in 
ants'  nests." 

M 

"Then  there  are  blind  fish  in  the  ocean,"  said  Mr. 
Perry.  "  They  live  at  a  great  depth,  and  people  did 
not  know  about  them  till  a  few  years  ago.  And  there 
are  hundreds  of  blind  cave  insects  and  spiders." 

"  Then  there  is  a  kind  of  craw-fish  in  Mammoth 
Cave  that  is  just  about  blind,"  said  Blanche;  "I  was 
reading  of  it  this  last  week." 

"  Well,  the  blind  creatures  that  I  read  about  were 
made  blind  by  human  means,"  said  Mrs.  Perry. 


KITTIES    TRIAL. 


"  What  creatures  were  they  ?  "  asked  Kittle. 
"  They  were  some  bats,"  said  her  mother,  "  and  they 
were  made  blind  by  an   Italian,  the  Abbe  Spallanzani, 
who  lived  near  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century." 
"  What  did  he  make  them  blind  for?  "  asked  Blanche. 
"  Because  he  wanted  to  try  to  find 
out  how  bats  could  fly  in  dark  pas- 
sages, where  there  was  not  enough 
light  so  that  they  could  see  anything, 
and  yet  not  hit  against  things.     So 
Spallanzani    captured    a    number   of 
bats    and    deprived    them    of    sight, 
either    by    putting    hot    wires    into 
their  eyes  or  by  taking  the  eyes  out 
altogether." 

"Oh!  the  cruel  man,"  cried  Kittie; 
"  how  could  he  bear  to  do  such  a  wicked  thing  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  her  mother.  "  It  was  per- 
fectly shocking,  I  think;  but  Spallanzani  may  have 
thought,  as  too  many  investigators  have,  that  it  was 
right  to  commit  cruelty  in  the  cause  of  science.  But 
these  poor  bats,  after  having  been  deprived  of  their 


BLIND  CRAW-FISH. 


KITTIES    TRIAL.  31 

eyes,  flew  just  as  well  as  before.  If  a  stick  was  held 
up  in  front  of  them  when  they  were  flying,  they 
avoided  it  just  as  if  they  saw  it,  and  if  a  cat  appeared, 
or  if  a  person  tried  to  put  his  hand  on  them  as  they 
hung  resting,  'they  flew  out  of  harm's  way  as  quickly 
as  they  had  done  before,  and  seemed  to  be  even  more 
careful  not  to  be  captured  than  they  were  to  avoid 
bumps  against  the  walls.  Spallanzani  allowed  one  of 
the  blind  bats  to  be  free  in  a  long,  underground  passage 
which,  at  about  the  middle,  turned  at  a  right  angle. 
The  blind  bat  flew  through  the  two  parts  of  the  pas- 
sage and  never  hit  the  sides  at  all,  and,  at  last,  dis- 
covered a  little  hole  in  the  roof,  and  though  more  than 
a  foot  away  from  the  hole,  yet  the  bat  changed  its 
course  just  as  though  it  had  seen  the  hole,  and  tried  to 
fly  up  into  the  cranny  and  hide  itself. 

"  Another  experiment  was  tried  in  a  garden  where 
a  sort  of  cage  had  been  made  out  of  nets.  From  the 
top  of  the  inside  of  this  cage  sixteen  strings  were  fas- 
tened so  as  to  hang  down,  and  then  two  bats  were  put 
inside.  One  of  these  bats  was  blind  and  the  other 
could  see,  but  they  flew  equally  well,  never  bumping 


32  KITTIES   TRIAL. 

against  the  strings  or  touching  them  except  with  the 
ends  of  their  wings.  At  last  the  blind  bat  proved  that 
it  was  really  smarter  than  the  other  that  could  see,  or 
else  it  was  smaller  than  that  one,  for  it  found  that  the 
meshes  of  the  net  were  big  enough  to  let  it  get  through, 
and  out  it  rushed  and  flew  into  the  garden.  After  a 
while  the  blind  bat  flew  up  to  the  only  roof  that  there 
was  near  by,  and  hid  itself  there.  So,  at  last,  from  his 
experiments,  Spallanzani  proved  that  it  could  not  be 
that  the  bats  depended  on  their  eyes  in  flying  through 
dark  passages." 

"  Was  he  satisfied  then  ?  "  asked  Al. 

"  No,"  said  his  mother,  "  he  tried  other  experiments. 
He  put  varnish  on  the  outside  of  one  blind  bat,  but 

that  did  not  seem    to  prevent   it  from  flying  well,  so 

• 

Spallanzani  thought  that  bats  could  not  depend  on  the 
sense  of  touch.  Then  he  thought  he  would  try  the 
sense  of  hearing.  So  he  filled  up  the  ears  of  a  bat 
with- wax,  but  still  the  bat  flew  and  avoided  all  objects, 
and  so  Spallanzani  knew  that  bats  did  not  hear  their 
way  in  the  dark.  There  were  only  two  other  senses, 
smell  and  taste,  to  be  tried.  At  first,  Spallanzani 


KITTIES   TRIAL.  33 

stopped  up  the  nostrils  of  the  bats  so  that  they  should 
not  smell  anything  when  flying,  but  of  course  they 
could  not  breathe,  either,  so  they  soon  fell  to  the  floor 
exhausted.  So,  instead,  Spallanzani  hung  before  their 
nostrils  pieces  of  sponge  that  had  been  filled  with 
camphor  or  musk  or  something  that  would  give  out 
such  a  powerful  odor  as  to  overcome  common  odors 
and  prevent  the  bats  from  smelling  their  way  along  in 
the  air,  if  that  was  the  way  that  they  usually  did.  But 
still  those  unconquerable  bats  flew  as  well  as  ever,  and 
they  continued  to  do  so  when  they  were  deprived  of 
the  sense  of  taste.  So,  at  last,  Spallanzani  gave  up  his 
experiments,  saying  that  he  thought  bats  have  some 
sixth  sense,  such  as  human  beings  do  not  have,  and  by 
this  they  find  their  way  so  readily. " 

"So  his  cruel  experiments  didn't  bring  him  much 
nearer  the  truth  „  than  he  was  before  he  did  all  that 
wickedness,"  said  Al. 

"  But  did  any  one  ever  find  out  why  bats  do  fly  so 
well  ?  "  asked  Kittie. 

"  People  believe  now  what  Cuvier  thought,"  said  her 
mother,  "  that  the  directness  of  a  bat's  flight  depends 


34  KITTIES    TRIAL. 

on  the  great  sensitiveness  of  the  wings  to  touch.  But 
I  think  I  should  have  to  want  to  know  a  thing  pretty 
badly  before  I  would  try  any  such  experiments  as 
Spallanzani's." 

"  Well,  I  should  think  so,"  said  Al  indignantly,  as 
the  "  Blind  Night  "  meeting  broke  up.  "  The  rules  of 
this  club  forbid  cruelty  to  animals,  and  I  don't  even 
like  to  hear  about  such  awful  doings." 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE    SEVEN    DIVISIONS. 

"  HYMENOPTERA,  Lepidoptera,  Diptera,  Coleoptera, 
Hemiptera,  Orthoptera,  Neuroptera."  That  was  what 
Kittie  sang  over  and  over  to  herself  as  she  went  around 
the  house,  dusting. 

Blanche  recited  the  same  thing  when  she  wiped 
dishes  and  swept,  and  Al  wrote  the  list  in  big  letters 
on  a  little  blackboard  that  hung  in  the  dining-room. 

The  seven  divisions  of  the  insects  seemed  to  be 
in  everybody's  mouth.  Aunt  Nan  declared  that  she 
had  become  so  used  to  hearing  them  recited  that  she 
sometimes  found  herself  repeating  the  seven  over  and 
over  without  thinking  what  she  was  doing. 

Al  further  ornamented  the  blackboard  and  explained 
the  meaning  of  the  mystic  words,  by  drawing  pictures 
with  colored  crayons.  Opposite  "  Hymenoptera  "  was 
a  yellow  bee  ;  opposite  "  Lepidoptera,"  a  gorgeous  black- 


35 


THE   SEVEN  DIVISIONS. 


MYAEN°PTERA-  • 


LEPlD°PTElRAe. 


and-red  butterfly.  On  a  line  with  the  word  "  Diptera  " 
was  a  blood-hungry  looking  mosquito ;  a  big  black 
beetle  stood  and  glared  at  "  Coleoptera,"  and  a  pretty 
correctly  drawn  picture  of  a  "  water-boatman "  illus- 
trated "  Hemiptera." 
A  grasshopper 
looked  as  though 
about  to  hop  straight 
at  the  word  "  Orthop- 
tera,"  and  a  couple  of 
.dragon-flies  held 
joint  possession  o  f 
"  Neuroptera." 

But  another  mat- 
ter claimed  the  atten- 
tion of  the  L  o  o  k- 
About  Club.  It  was 
the  application  of  a 
person  for  membership.  The  Perrys  had,  to  use  Al's 
expression,  "  stacks  of  relatives,"  and  one  of  these,  a 
little  girl-cousin  named  Alice,  lived  in  California.  She 
had  heard  of  the  Look-About  Club,  and  sent  a  letter 


AL  S    BLACKHOAKD. 


THE  SEVEN  DIVISIONS.  37 

asking  if  she  might  join  it.  The  older  members  of  the 
club  agreed  that  it  should  be  just  as  the  three  younger 
members  said,  and  so  one  day  Al  and  Kittie  and 
Blanche  were  assembled  in  solemn  conclave  in  the 
bay-window  of  the  dining-room,  there  to  decide  the 
important  question  as  to  whether  the  applicant  should 
be  let  in. 

"  I  wonder  if  she  is  nice,"  said  Blanche,  as  she  looked 
again  at  the  little  letter  on  the  table.  "  I  don't  believe 
I  want  her  to  join  very  much.  It  seems  nicer  to  just 
keep  our  club  to  ourselves." 

"  But  I  suppose  she  would  think  we  were  rather  self- 
ish if  we  did  that,"  said  Kittie,  who  was  reading  the 
letter  over  to  herself.  This  is  what  she  read: 


DEAR  COUSINS  : 

I  do  not  suppose  you  know  me  at  all,  but  my  name  is  Alice,  and  I  am  your 
cousin.  So  is  Bert.  He  is  my  brother.  My  papa's  a  doctor,  and  he  has  an 
office  down  town,  over  the  drug  store.  Papa  always  lets  Bert  and  me  come 
and  see  him  in  the  office  when  we  want  to.  Some  little  girls  would  be  'fraid 
to  go  there,  'cause  there's  a  lot  of  bones  they  call  a  skel'ton,  hanging  up  behind 
the  door,  but  Bert  and  I  ain't  'fraid.  We  go  right  by  them  and  ain't  scared 
one  bit. 

We're  lots  of  help  to  papa,  too.     We  can  tear  up  cloth  so  as  to  make  ban- 
dages, and  we  scrape  lint,  and  we  go  round  with  papa  when  he  rides  out  to 


THE   SEVEN  DIVISIONS. 


see  the  sick  folks,  and  we  hold  the  horse  while  papa  is  in  the  houses.  And  I 
get  glasses  of  water  for  folks  when  they  come  to  the  office  to  have  their  teeth 
pulled,  and  I  water  the  plants  in  papa's  window 
and  keep  his  vase  full  of  flowers,  and  Bertie  car- 
ries some  of  papa's  bills  round  to  folks  that  don't 
pay.  We're  real  useful,  I  know,  'cause  papa  says 
he  don't  know  how  he  could  get  along  without  us. 
It's  nice  to  be  doctor's  folks,  sometimes.  You 
get  'most  as  many  things  as  a  minister  does. 
Folks  that  live  in  the  country  send  us  eggs,  and 
cheese,  and  apples,  and  chickens,  and  once  we 
got  a  big  turkey  on  Thanksgiving.  And  once  a 
man  gave  Bert  and  me  a  cunning  little  goat, 
'cause  papa  had  cured  his  baby  that  had  the  croup. 
Then  I  like  being  doctor's  folks  'cause  Bert 
and  I  get  all  the  pill-boxes  after  papa's  through 
with  them.  Pill-boxes  are  real  nice  for  band- 
boxes for  dolls'  hats.  Some  of  the  pill-boxes  are  pink,  and  some  are  blue,  and 
when  you  open  some  of  them  there's  another  little  box  inside,  and  in  that 

there's  another  one,  till  sometimes  there  are 
four  or  five  right  inside  of  each  other,  and  the 
littlest  ones  of  all  are  real  cunning;  just  big 
enough  for  a  baby-doll's  cap.  I  trade  off  my 
pill-boxes  to  the  other  girls  at  school.  None 
of  their  fathers  have  any  pill-boxes  to  give  them, 
and  I  guess  they  wish  their  papas  would  be 
doctors,  too,  like  mine. 

But  sometimes  it  isn't  one  bit  nice  to  have 
your  papa  a  doctor,  'cause  he  has  to  go  away  off 
over  the  mountains,  when  it's  real  dark  at  night, 
to  see  sick  folks,  and  sometimes  the  horse  gets 
scared  and  throws  him  off  and  hurts  him  real 


TWO   BRAVE   LITTLE    PEOPLE. 


THE   SEVEN  DIVISIONS. 


39 


MAKING   THE    RED   TIDY. 


badly.      Once  the  horse  ran  away 

and  hurt  papa  so  that  some  men 

had  to  pick  him  up  and  bring  him 

home,    and   it   scared    us    awfully, 

'cause  we  thought  he  was  dead ;  but 

he  wasn't,  only  he  was  sick  for  a 

long  time  so  that   he  couldn't  go 

down  to  his  office.     And  Bert  and 

I  had  to  stay  at  home. 

Then  I  'member  another  time 

I  didn't  like   at  all.     I'll  tell  you 

'bout  it.     Well,  once  I  worked  and 

worked  real  hard,  to  make  mamma 

a  red  tidy.     It  was  for  her  birthday,  and   it  was  to  go  on  the   big  rocking- 
chair  in  the  parlor.      Auntie  showed  me  how  to  make  it,  and  I  bought  the 

worsted  with  my  own  money,  and  I 
made  it  nights,  after  school,  up  in  my 
room. 

It  was  the  first  tidy  I  ever  made, 
and  it  looked  real  nice.  Mamma  liked 
it  ever  so  much,  and  she  put  it  on  the 
big  rocking-chair,  and  papa  said  he 
thought  it  was  just  the  prettiest  thing 
in  the  parlor.  It  wasn't,  really,  you 
know,  but  he  just  thought  so  'cause 
his  little  girl  made  it. 

Well,  just  about  that  time  every- 
body was  getting  scared  about  the 
small-pox.  Lots  of  people  had  it,  and 

ALICE  ANSWERS  THE   R.NG.  ^  ^    ^  vaccinated       Mamma  wajj 

dreadfully  afraid  papa  would  take  it,  he  had  to  see  so  many  sick  folks. 
Well,  one  night,  after  it   began  to  grow  dark,  there  was  a   ring  at  the 


4o 


THE   SEVEN  DIVISIONS. 


door,  and  I  went  to  see  who  was  there.  The  others  weren't  through  eating 
supper  yet.  There  was  a  big  man  at  the  door,  and  he  said,  "  Is  the  doctor  at 
home,  little  girl  ? "  And  I  said,  "  Yes,  sir ;  won't  you  come  in  ? "  So  he 
walked  into  the  parlor,  and  I  told  him  to  sit  down  in  the  big  rocking-chair, 
and  I'd  call  papa.  It  was  so  dark  that  I  could  hardly  see  the  man's  face. 

Well,  I  went  out  and  called  papa,  and  he  left  his  supper  and  went  into 
the  parlor  with  a  light,  and  the  next  thing  I  heard  him  say,  "  My  stars  !  "  and 
then  we  heard  the  man  say  something,  and  then  he  went  out  the  front  door 
pretty  quick. 

Papa  came  back  to  us,  and  he  told  us  that  that  man  was  all  broken  out 
with  the  small-pox,  and  there  he'd  been  sitting  in  the  big  rocking-chair,  lean- 
ing back  right  against  my  new  red  tidy !  Papa  ran  and  took  the  big  chair 

out-doors,  and  mamma  opened  all  the  windows 
quick,  and  gave  the  house  a  good  airing. 
And  then  we  took  a  shovelful  of  hot  coals  and 
sprinkled  sugar  on  them,  and  poured  on  vine- 
gar, and  went  through  the  rooms  with  that 
smoking  and  making  an  awful  smudge.  And 
papa  went  'round  sprinkling  all  the  rooms 
with  some  dreadful  smelling  stuff  he  called 
'bolic  acid. 

And  I  had  to  be  vaccinated  all  over  again, 
'cause  my  last  vaccination  hadn't  taken.  And 
don't  you  think  my  lovely  red  tidy,  that  I'd 
taken  such  pains  to  make,  papa  tore  off  from 
the  chair  with  the  tongs  and  burnt  in  the  fire  ! 
Wasn't  that  too  bad  ? 

And  we  kept  the  big  rocking-chair  outdoors 
in  the  hay-field  for  weeks  and  weeks.  We 

threw  water  on  it,  and  washed  it  with  the  hose  and  scrubbed  it  with  the  mop, 
'cause  we  didn't  dare  go  near  it,  any  of  us.  At  last  papa  brought  it  into  the 
house,  but  it  didn't  look  fit  to  be  in  the  parlor  any  more  ;  it  had  to  stay  in  the 


SPRINKLING   THE   ROOMS. 


THE   SEVEN  DIVISIONS. 


kitchen.     And  for  all  we  were  exposed  so  much,  none  of  us  caught  the  small- 
pox; and  so  mamma  said  we  ought  to  feel  thankful;  and  so  I  did,  but  I  felt 
sorry,  too,  'cause  the  red  tidy  was  all  burnt  up,  and  I  don't  know  whether  I 
like  having  my  papa  a  doctor  or  not 
since  that  night.     Would  you  ? 

Anyway,  my  papa  knows  ever  so 
much,  and  he  heard  about  your  Look- 
About  Club,  and  he  likes  it  and  he 
wants  me  to  join  it.  I  want  to,  too. 
May  I  ?  I  wanted  Bert  to  join,  but 
he  says  he  won't,  not  yet ;  not  till  he 
sees  how  I  like  it.  Good-by  !"  Please 
write  and  tell  me  if  I  can  join. 
Your  cousin, 

ALICE. 


QUITE   DISHEARTENING. 


"  If  her  papa  '  knows  ever  so  much/  the  way  she  says, 
then  maybe  he  will  tell  her  everything,  and  she  will  get 
'way  ahead  of  us,"  suggested  Blanche  discontentedly. 

"  I  don't  believe  it,"  said  Al.  "  We  have  studied  one 
year  now,  and  I  don't  believe  Alice  can  catch  up  with 
us  in  some  things.  Then  maybe  she  will  find  some 
live  things  out  there  that  are  different  from  those  we 
have  here,  and  she  can  tell  us  about  them,  and  that 
will  be  interesting.  And  as  soon  as  it  gets  pleasant 
enough  we  will  go  dredging  and  insect-hunting  again, 
and  see  what  we  can  find  to  write  to  her." 


42  THE   SEVEN  DIVISIONS. 

"  Do  you  really  mean  to  go  dredging  again  this 
year?  "  asked  Blanche.  "  Seems  to  me  we  found  'most 
everything  we  could  find  in  the  brook,  last  year." 

"  You  wouldn't  think  so  if  you  had  seen  the  list  of 
questions  that  papa  gave  me,"  said  Al,  as  he  hunted  in 
his  pockets  and  finally  produced  a  paper.  "  Just  listen 
to  all  these."  And  Al  read  as  follows  : 

1.  What  is  a  Ranatra? 

2.  What  is  a  Triton  ? 

3.  What  shape  are  the  eggs  of  the  water-boatman, 
and  what  kind  of  larvae  come  from  them  ? 

4.  Larvae  of  Gyrinidce  ? 

5.  Ditto  of  Ploteres  or  Hydrometridcz  ? 

6.  Which  are  the  beetles  known  as  the  water-lovers, 
or  Hydrophilidce,  and  what  are  their  eggs  and  larvae  ? 

7.  Which  are  the  beetles  known  as  the  water-scor- 
pions, or   the  Nepidce  f   and   describe  their  eggs   and 
larvae. 

"  My ! "  said  Blanche,  as  Al,  having  impressively 
read  the  seven  questions  with  a  pause  between  each,  to 
see  if  any  answers  were  forthcoming,  folded  the  paper 
once  more  and  put  it  away.  "  What  a  dreadful  lot  of 


THE   SEVEN  DIVISIONS.  43 

questions  !  Sure  enough,  we  didn't  look  for  the  eggs 
or  larvae  of  any  of  our  beetles  last  year,  did  we  ?  " 

"  None  but  those  of  the  Dytiscida"  said  Al.  "  You 
remember  we  did  find  a  few  of  their  larvae,  and  Aunt 
Nan  wrote  about  them  in  our  pamphlet.  But  I  don't 
know  their  eggs.  We  were  too  busy,  last  year,  to 
learn  everything." 

"  Do  you  suppose  we  can  ever  find  the  answers  to 
all  those  questions  ?  "  asked  Kittie  dubiously. 

"  Well,"  said  Al,  "  papa  says  that  the  answers  are  in 
the  brook,  or  will  be  there  before  the  summer  is  over, 
and  all  we  can  do  is  to  look  and  see  for  ourselves." 

"  I  wish  it  would  hurry  up  and  become  pleasant 
weather,"  said  Blanche,  looking  out  at  the  dismal  land- 
scape. "  We  folks  can't  go  dredging  for  months  yet, 
and  I  s'pose,  in  California,  Cousin  Alice  could  go  this 
minute,  if  she  wanted  to.  She  will  get  ahead  of  us,  I 
know,  for  she  can  be  at  work  while  we  just  have  to  be 
shut  up  in  the  house." 

"  Never  mind,"  said  Al ;  "  maybe  her  brook  will  dry 
up  in  the  summer.  Just  as  likely  as  not  it  will,  for 
lots  of  California  brooks  do  dry  up  in  the  long,  hot 


44 


THE   SEVEN  DIVISIONS. 


weather,  and  then  she  can't  be  dredging,  and  we  can. 
So  maybe  we'll  really  have  about  as  long  to  learn 
things  in  as  she  will,  take  the  year  'round.  And  we 
can  keep  on  studying  from  books  till  it  is  pleasant,  and 
anyhow,  we've  got  one  year's  start  of  her,  because  we 

studied  last  year.     I  don't  be- 
lieve she  can  beat  us  much." 

"She  sha'n't,"  said  Kittie ; 
"  I'm  just  going  to  learn  every- 
thing I  can." 

"  People  who  really  care 
about  learning  are  not  gen- 
erally so  jealous  of  others  as 
you  seem  to  be,"  said  Aunt 
Nan,  as  she  came  in  to  put 
away  some  things  in  the  dish- 
closet.  "They  are  always  glad 
to  have  other  folks  find  out 

the  truth  about  things,  even  if  it  does  show  that  those 
other  people  are  smarter  than  themselves." 

Kittie  and  Blanche  looked  at  each  other  with  rather 
red  faces  as  Aunt  Nan  went  out  of  the  room. 


THE  NEW  MEMBER. 


THE   SEVEN  DIVISIONS.  45 

"  Well,  I  guess  we'd  better  let  Alice  join,"  said  Kittie, 
after  a  little,  and  as  there  was  no  dissenting  voice,  it 
was  considered  decided,  and  Al  was  appointed  to  write 
to  his  cousin  and  tell  her  that  she  now  belonged  to  the 
Look-About  Club,  and  would  be  expected  to  report 
once  in  a  while,  what  she  found. 


CHAPTER    III. 

THE    HYDROPHILIDAE. 

ALICE  and  her  father  did  discover  the  Hydrophilidae, 
or  "  water-loving  "  beetles,  before  the  rest  of  the  club 
found  them.  One  February  day  when  Alice  was  dredg- 
ing in  a  little  brook,  she  found  a  black  beetle  that  shone 
underneath  like  silver  when  it  was  in  the  water.  It 
was  only  the  air  that  the  beetle  carried  down  with  it, 
however,  that  made  it  shine. 

Alice  brought  it  home  and  showed  it  to  her  father. 
He  looked  at  it  carefully  and  finally  told  her  that  he 
was  quite  sure  that  it  belonged  to  the  Hydrophilidae. 
The  little  beetle  was  about  three  eighths  of  an  inch 
long  and  a  quarter  of  an  inch  wide. 

"He's  sort  of  humpbacked,  isn't  he?"  said  Alice,  as 
she  looked  into  her  bottle.  And  the  beetle  did  look  a 
little  so ;  that  is,  its  back  was  quite  convex  in  shape. 

"  Just  look  at  his  hind  feet,  papa,"  said  Alice,  after  a 

46 


THE  HYDROPHILID^E. 


47 


little.  "  Don't  you  see,  he  wears  little  black  spurs.  I 
wonder  if  they're  sharp.  There  are  two  spurs  on  each 
of  his  hind  feet." 

"  There  are  some  on  his  middle  and  first  pairs  of 
feet,  too,"  said  her  father,  and  pretty  soon  Alice  saw 
that  this  was  so. 

"What  shall  I  do  with  him,  papa?  "  said  she. 

"  I  think  you  had  better  keep  him  in  some  water^and 
give  him  a  piece  of  water-weed  to  nibble,"  said  her 
father.  "  By  and  by  you  and  I  will  go  down  to  the 
brook  and  get  a  number  of 
those  beetles  and  set  them  up 
housekeeping  in  a  bottle,  and 
we'll  learn  how  they  live." 

A   while    after   this,    Alice 
and  her  father  made  the  prom- 

,  ,...  j       i  1     ,  SMALL  MEMBERS  OK  HYDROPHILID>E. 

ised   expedition   and   brought 

home  about  twenty  of  the  small  beetles.  They  were 
chiefly  to  be  found  in  the  mud  at  the  bottom  of  the 
pool,  but  sometimes  were  to  be  seen  coming  up  to  the 
surface  of  the  water,  or  crawling  on  the  water-weeds 
beside  the  brook. 


HYDROPHILUS  PICEUS. 


48  THE  HYDROPHILID&. 

"  Why,  papa,  didn't  that  beetle  squeak  ?  "  asked  Alice, 
as  her  father  captured  one  and  put  it  into  his  bottle. 
"  Doesn't  he  like  to  be  caught  ?  " 

"  I  guess  not,"  said  her  father.  "  He  must  have 
thought  that  something  dreadful  was 
going  to  happen  to  him,  but  I  had  no 
idea  that  he  could  squeak  like  that." 
After  Alice  had  kept  her  beetles  a 
while,  however,  she  became  quite 
used  to  hearing  squeaks  from  them.  They  could  make 
sounds  that  could  be  heard  across  a  room.  They 
almost  always  made  these  sounds  when  they  thought 
they  were  in  danger,  or  when  they  were  about  to  be 
caught. 

Alice  did  not  find  out,  however,  till  one  of  the  beetles 
died  and  she  examined  him,  that  the  Hydrophilidae 
have  still  another  spine,  on  the  under  side  of  the  body, 
just  at  the  end  of  the  ridge  running  down  the  sternum, 
and  looking  like  a  little  concealed  black  pin. 

"  My ! "  said  Alice,  when  she  discovered  this,  "  I 
guess  if  that  should  stick  into  me  it  would  hurt.  It's 
real  sharp,"  touching  the  little  black  spine  cautiously. 


THE  HYDROPHILID^E.  49 

"  Yes,"  said  her  father,  "  I  have  read  that  in  some 
large  African  species  of  these  beetles  that  spine  of  the 
sternum  is  developed  till  it  makes  a  very  long  and 
sharp  stiletto ;  and  it  is  supposed  that  the  beetle  uses 
this  stiletto  to  defend  itself  with." 

"  That's  just  the  way  Tillie  Russell  does  at  school," 
said  Alice.  "  She's  always  sticking  pins  into  the  girls, 
and  I'm  going  to  tell  her  that  she's  just  like  my  beetles, 
I  don't  believe  I'd  want  to  go  dredging  in  Africa.  A 
spine  like  the  one  this  beetle  has  would  be  sharper  than 
I'd  want  to  feel." 

"Yes,"  said  her  father,  "I  think  that  the  Hydro, 
philidae  deserve  to  be  arrested  for  carrying  concealed 
weapons." 

"  I'm  glad  of  one  thing,"  said  Alice,  as  she  gazed  at 
her  bottle,  "  and  that  is,  that  these  beetles  won't  want  to 
eat  things  alive,  the  way  those  beetles  did  that  Blanche 
and  Kittie  kept  last  year.  I  guess  if  I  give  these  lots 
of  water-weeds  they'll  be  satisfied." 

They  were  not  so  well  satisfied,  however,  that  they 
did  not  try  to  get  away,  and  after  Alice  had  seen  sev- 
eral tumble  out  of  the  bottle  and  one  try  to  raise  its 


THE  HYDROPHILWJS. 


wings  and  fly,  she  tied  a  piece  of  mosquito-bar  over  the 
top  of  the  jar  and   kept  the    Hydrophilidae   at   home. 

Whenever 
these  bee  tl es 
wanted  air  they 
would  come  up 
to  the  surface  of 
the  water  and 
there,  instead  of 
floating  wrong 
side  up  and  tak- 
ing air  through 
the  end  of  the 
body,  the  way  the 
water-b  o  a  t  m  e  n 
had  done,  or  se- 
curing a  bubble 
of  air  and  taking 
that  down  to  the 
bottom  of  the  jar, 

the  way  the  Dytiscidae  had  done,  these  beetles  put  up 
their  heads  in  a  sort  of  sidelong  fashion  and  took  the 


THE  METAMORPHOSIS  OF  HYDROPHII.US  PICEUS  OK  EUROPE. 


THE   HYDROPHILID^E.  51 

air  that  way.  Then  they  would  rush  down  again,  the 
shining  silver  air  covering  all  the  lower  part  of  their 
bodies,  as  it  always  did. 

Alice's  father  told  her  that  that  is  the  way  one  of  the 
big  members  of  this  family  does.  The  big  member 
lives  in  Europe,  and  is  about  an  inch  and  a  half  long. 
Its  name  is  Hydrophihts  piceus,  or  the  "  pitch  black 
water-lover,"  as  that  name  means,  and  this  beetle  is  so 
heavy  that  it  cannot  hold  itself  horizontally  at  the  sur- 
face of  the  water,  but  it  pokes  its  head  out  and  folds  its 
antennae.  Now  these  antennae  are  very  curiously  made, 
the  club-shaped  ends  being  partly  hollowed  out,  and  in 
this  way  the  beetle  catches  a  little  bubble  of  air  which 
is  pressed  against  the  lower  side  of  the  beetle  and 
spreads  till  it  comes  to  the  little  breathing  holes. 

After  some  days  Alice  came  rushing  in,  holding  her 
bottle  and  crying,  "  Papa,  just  see  what  I've  found  ! " 

"What  is  it?"  asked  her  father,  looking  up  from  his 
newspaper. 

Alice  ran  and  handed  him  the  bottle.  The  beetles 
inside  were  by  this  time  in  a  great  state  of  fright,  for 
they  had  been  pretty  thoroughly  shaken. 


THE  HYDROPHILID^E. 


•tr-IOAT.NC,   .._ ,. 

ri        a. 


EGG  OF  HYDROPHILID/E. 


"  Just  see  that  white  thing,"  said  Alice,  pointing  into 
the  jar.     A  stick  was  floating  there  and  a  queer  white 

bunch  was  attached  to  it. 
"  What  is  it,  papa  ? "  asked 
Alice. 

"It    is    an    egg,"    said    her 
father. 

"Why,  it  looks  for   all    the 
world  as  though  it  were  made 
of  candle-grease,"  said  Alice,  peering  in. 

The  egg  was  white  and  shaped  something  like  a  little 
cylinder.  It  looked  as  though  the  stick 
had  suddenly  sent  out  a  little  white 
branch.  The  egg  seemed  to  be  closed, 
but  a  short  white  streamer  of  the  same 
material  as  the  egg  floated  from  one 
side  of  the  top  and  hung  in  the  water. 

"  If  I'd  seen  that  down  at  the  brook, 
I'd  have  thought  a  spider  spun  it," 
said  Alice,  examining  it  more  critically. 

"You  might  take    it   out    and   put   it    into    another 
bottle    by  itself,"  said   her    father,   and   cautiously  the 


SAMli  EUGS  IN  DIFFER- 
ENT PQSITION  TO 
SHOW  THE  FLOATING 
STRIP. 


THE  HYDROPHILIDM. 


53 


stick  was  fished  out  without  letting  any  of  the  beetles 
escape.  The  long  streamer  fell  back  over  the  top  of 
the  egg  as  the  stick  was  drawn  out  of  the  water. 

Alice  put  the  stick  into  a  little  bottle  of  water  and 
further  developments  were   awaited.     Other   eggs   ap- 
peared soon  in  the  Hydrophilidae  bottle,  on  leaves  and 
on  the  inside  of  the  glass.     The  eggs 
were  usually  about  three  eighths  of  an 
inch  long  and  a  little  more  than  one 
eighth    in    diameter.      This    measure- 
ment did  not  include  the  floating  strip, 
which  was  sometimes  five  eighths  of 

o 

an  inch  long.  In  other  eggs  this  strip 
was  almost  entirely  lacking,  and  even 
when  present  did  not  always  fold  over 
the  egg  when  it  was  taken  out  of  the 
water.  This  bottle  formed  a  most  interesting  study. 
"  The  yellow  eggs  are  all  covered  up  in  that  white 
cocoon  by  the  mother-beetle,"  said  Alice's  father  to  her. 
«  I  read  in  one  book  that  the  mother  has  two  little  spin- 
nerets, which  are  very  strange  things  indeed  for  a  beetle 
to  have,  and  she  spins  that  white  stuff  for  the  cocoon, 


TWO  EGGS  OF  LITTLE  HY- 
DROPHILID.E  LAID  ON  A 
PERIWINKLE  LEAK. 


54  THE  HYDROPHILID^E. 

as  though   she  were  a   spider  fixing   up  a  lot   of  her 


One  day,  several  weeks  after  this,  Alice  was  looking 
at  the  first  egg.  She  was  becoming  impatient  with  it. 
Why  did  the  larvae  not  hatch  ?  The  egg  was  growing 
greenish  and  the  floating  strip  was  bordered  with  a  line 
of  green. 

Suddenly  she  became  aware  that  there  were  some 
queer  things  around  the  egg.  They  were  so  small  and 
white  that  she  hardly  noticed  them  at  first.  One  little 
fellow  was  just  pulling  himself  out,  and  through  the 
semi-transparent  walls  of  the  egg,  she  could  see,  for  a 
minute,  the  part  of  his  body  that  had  not  yet  come  out 
into  the  water. 

The  larvae  were  queer  little,  grayish  white  things, 
outlined  with  dark  around  the  edge,  and  were  about 
one  eighth  of  an  inch  long,  exclusive  of  a  kind  of  pair 
of  little  horns  that  each  wore,  extending  from  the  head. 
It  was  afterwards  discovered  that  these  so-called 
41  horns  "  were  a  kind  of  pincers  by  which  the  larva 
grasped  its  prey.  Each  larva  had  six  little  white  legs, 
so  thin  that  they  looked  like  threads  of  spider-web. 


THE   HYDROPHILIDJE.  55 

One  looking  at  the  larvae  closely  could  see  quite  well 
the  little  black  dots  of  eyes  that  the  infants  wore. 

"There  are  ten  of  them.  Give  them  a  piece  of  a  leaf 
to  eat,  and  let  them  be  happy.  It's  lucky  we  know 
their  ancestors,  for  now  we  can  tell  what  will  suit  the 
children,"  said  Alice,  with  premature  self-congratulation. 

But  after  a  few  days  there  seemed  to  be  trouble  in 
that  bottle. 

"What  does  become  of  those  larvae?"  asked  Alice. 
"  There  were  ten,  and  now  I  can't  find  but  four." 

Her  father  looked  into  the  bottle,  held  it  up  to  the 
light,  shook  it,  and  then  solemnly  pointed  at  the  bottom. 
Alice  looked. 

"  Why,  they're  dead,"  said  Alice,  as  she  discovered 
some  of  the  little  bodies  of  the  larvae  lying  under  the 
stick.  "  What  can  have  killed  them  ?  " 

"  Perhaps  if  you  watch  you  will  find  out,"  said  her 
father,  nnd  in  a  few  days  a  dreadful'  fact  was  revealed. 
The  Hydrophilidae  larvae  were  cannibals.  They  killed 
each  other.  Alice  came  upon  one  of  them  holding  a 
brother  aloft,  his  horns  stuck  into  the  body,  evidently 
in  the  act  of  making  a  meal  off  from  his  relative. 


56  THE  HYDROPHILIDAE. 

"  The  wicked  thing !  "  said  Alice  wrathfully.  "  There, 
now  !  He's  gone  and  killed  the  only  live  larva  beside 
himself.  Now  he  will  have  to  starve,  for  there  isn't 
anything  else  for  him  to  eat." 

But  her  father  interfered  in  behalf  of  the  murderer. 

"  I've  been    reading  about  the   Hydrophilidae,"  said 

• 
he,  "  and  I've  found  out  that  the  beetles  themselves  are 

mostly  herbivorous,  and  that's  the  reason  why  we've 
kept  them  so  easily  by  just  giving  them  a  few  weeds 
from  the  brook,  and  a  dead  earthworm  now  and  then. 
But  the  larvae  of  the  Hydrophilidae  are  carnivorous, 
and  eat  little  worms,  and  I  suppose  that  the  reason 
that  they've  been  killing  one  another  is  that  we  have 
not  given  them  any  worms  at  all.  So  you  see,  we  are 
really  partly  to  blame  for  their  bad  conduct.  I'm  going 
to  get  this  fellow  something  to  eat,"  and  he  took  the 
dredger  and  went  off  to  the  brook. 

He  returned,  after  a  time,  with  two  or  three  minute 
black-headed  worms,  the  larvae  of  gnats.  Alice  took  the 
last  remaining  larva  out  of  his  bottle  and  put  him  into 
the  lid  of  a  tin  can,  so  as  to  feed  him  more  easily  in 
the  shallow  water.  Then  Alice  put  the  black-headed 


THE  HYDROPHILID^E. 


57 


worms  into  the  lid.     They  immediately  wriggled  to  the 
side  and  hitched  themselves  up  till  entirely  above  the  • 
water. 

"  The  larva  never  can  reach  them  there,"  said  Alice, 
and  with  a  little  stick  she  pushed  one  of  the  worms 
down  into  the  water  and  guided  it  to  the  larva.  That 


('occoorj 
*-», —  op 

EGG   COCOONS  OF   HYDROI'HILUS   PICEUS   OK   EUROPE  (magnififd}. 

creature  received  it  gladly,  but  when,  the  next  day,  Alice 
offered  another  worm,  the  larva  did  not  seem  to  care 
for  it. 

"  Perhaps  he  isn't  hungry  yet,"  said  Alice,  but  the 
next  day,  the  larva  acted  just  the  same.  He  stayed 
down  at  the  bottom  of  the  water,  making  short  walks 
about  his  home,  but  gradually  grew  more  stupid  and  at 
last  died.  So  the  first  Hydrophilidae  egg  was  an  entire 
failure. 

"  What  would  my  larva  have  done  if  he  had  lived  ?  " 


THE  HYDROPHILID&. 

asked  Alice,  as  she  looked  at  the  mite  of  a  thing  lying 
motionless  in  the  water. 

"  He  would  have  changed  his  skin  several  times," 
said  her  father,  "  and  when  he  had  become  fully  grown 
as  a  larva  he  would  have  buried  himself  in  the  earth 
and  become  a  pupa.  When  he  came  out  to  the  light 
again  he  would  have  been  a  perfect  beetle." 

But  hard  as  Alice  tried  to  care  for  other  beetle-larvae 
that  came  from  other  eggs,  yet  she  never  could  succeed 
in  keeping  them  till  they  were  fully  grown.  Once  she 
thought  she  was  going  to  be  successful.  The  larva 
developed  a  taste  for  fresh  water  shrimps  and  Alice 
kept  him  wrell  supplied  with  these  little  creatures. 
But  from  some  unexplained  reason,  after  the  larva  had 
grown  finely  and  seemed  quite  healthy,  one  day  he  died, 
and  Alice  was  left  lamenting.  That  night  she  wrote  in 
her  note-book,  "  It's  a.  good  deal  harder  to  bring  up  a 
beetle  than  I  thought." 


CHAPTER    IV. 

THE    CLUB'S    PAMPHLET. 

So  well  had  Aunt  Nan  and  Al's  pamphlet  been  re- 
ceived the  year  before  that  the  two  publishers  thought 
they  would  venture  to  bring  out  a  new  one.  There 
were  two  copies  of  this  "  Pamphlet  No.  II.,"  for  one 
had  to  be  sent  to  Cousin  Alice.  That  young  lady  was 
quite  astonished  at  the  present,  for  she  had  not  known 
anything  about  the  Look-About  Club's  book-making 
abilities,  not  having  seen  "  Pamphlet  No.  I."  The  new 
pamphlet  began  with 

A  RAVEN'S  COMMUNICATIONS. 

Yes,  I  suppose  that  people  do  say  that  I  am  a  thief. 
I  know  that  I  do  pick  up  things  and  hide  them.  But 
the  Indians  of  the  North  Pacific  coast  have  a  story  that 
once  a  raven  stole  something  that  turned  out  to  be  a 

59 


6o 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


blessing  to  men.  The  Indians  say  that  once  when  the 
world  was  new  there  was  no  fresh  water  on  the  conti- 
nent. A  selfish  person  named  Khanukh  kept  all  the 
fresh  water  in  his  well,  and  this  well  was  on  an  island 
east  of  Sitka  in  the  Pacific  Ocean.  All  men  longed 
for  some  fresh  water,  but  this  selfish  person  kept  it ; 

and  to  make  sure  that  no 
one  should  come  and  steal 
some  of  it,  he  built  his 
hut  over  the  mouth  of  the 
well.  But  Yehl,  who  was 
in  the  shape  of  a  crow  or 
raven  most  of  the  time, 
and  who  is  the  raven-god 
of  these  Thlinkeet  In- 
dians, determined  that  he 
would  get  some  fresh 
water  for  the  poor,  thirsty  people  living  on  the  earth. 

So  Yehl  went  and  found  the  selfish  person  Khanukh. 
The  old  man  was  very  polite  and  invited  him  to  come 
into  the  hut  and  eat.  He  gave  Yehl  many  nice  things 
for  dinner;  among  them  was  some  fresh  water. 


THE  KAVKN. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  61 

After  dinner  the  two  sat  down,  and  Yehl  began  to 
talk.  He  talked  so  long  that  the  old  man  fell  asleep, 
but  unfortunately,  he  slept  on  the  cover  of  the  well,  so 
that  Yehl  could  not  steal  the  water  as  he  had  intended 
to  do.  So  he  woke  up  the  old  man,  and  on  some  pre- 
tense made  him  go  down  to  the  seashore.  No  sooner 
was  he  gone  than  Yehl  hurried  to  drink  all  the  water 
he  could,  and  then  changing  to  his  raven  shape,  he 
flew  up  the  chimney,  thinking  to  get  out  that  way  and 
fly  home. 

But,  alas !  the  chimney  was  too  narrow,  and  Yehl 
stuck  in  it.  Just  at  that  minute  the  old  man  Khanukh 
came  back  from  the  seashore.  He  looked  around,  and 
not  seeing  his  visitor  in  the  hut,  he  looked  up  the  chim- 
ney, and  lo !  there  was  a  bird.  Khanukh  knew  at 
once  that  Yehl  had  changed  himself  to  a  raven,  and 
he  determined  that  he  would  punish  him ;  so  he  built 
a  roaring  fire  in  the  chimney  and  sat  down  to  see  how 
the  raven  would  like  the  smoke.  Before  this  the  raven 
had  been  a  white  bird ;  but  while  he  was  in  that  chim- 
ney he  became  so  covered  with  smoke  and  soot  that  he 
has  ever  since  been  the  blackest  of  birds. 


62  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

At  last  old  man  Khanukh  fell  asleep  again,  and  poor 
Yehl  flew  down  and  out  of  the  hut.  He  still  had  the 
water  he  had  drank,  and  as  he  flew  over  the  continent 
he  let  drops  of  the  fresh  water  fall  from  his  beak  down 
to  the  land.  And  wherever  a  little  drop  fell,  there  a 
spring  or  a  creek  sprang  up,  but  where  a  big  drop  fell, 
there  grew  a  lake  or  a  river.  And  so,  say  the  Indians, 
the  raven  was  a  good  bird  to  men  and  brought  them 
water.  I  presume,  though,  that  you  do  not  believe 
that  story.  I  do  not  myself,  great  as  would  be  my  joy 
to  hear  anything  good  said  about  my  folks. 

The  Indians  have  a  good  many  tales  about  birds, 
anyway.  Do  you  know  that  big  swimming  bird  called 
the  Loon  ?  Maybe  if  you  have  not  seen  him,  you 
have  heard  his  loud  cry  sometime  when  you  have  been 
in  the  woods.  Well,  the  Indians  on  Vancouver's 
Island  have  a  story  about  the  loon.  They  say  that  the 
loon  was  once  a  fisherman,  and  the  way  he  happened  to 
turn  into  a  bird  was  this.  Once,  long  ago,  two  fisher- 
men went  out  to  sea  in  their  canoes.  One  of  the  men 
caught  but  very  few  fish.  The  other  fisherman  began 
to  make  fun  of  his  unlucky  companion,  and  this  made 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


the  unfortunate  fisherman  so  angry  that  at  last  he 
knocked  the  other  on  the  head,  cut  out  his  tongue  and 
stole  all  his  fish,  and  then  went  back  home. 

But  although  the  poor  fisherman   had  been  so  badly 
used,  yet  he  made  his  way  back  to  the  shore,  where  he 
tried  to  tell  people  how  dreadfully  he  had  been  treated. 
But    people    could 
hardly     understand 
him,   for    he    could 
not   talk  well  with- 
out his  tongue,  and 
it  came  to  pass  that 
he  was  changed  into 
the   bird    called   the 

Loon,  and  whenever  any  one  hears  this  bird  making 
its  loud  cry  by  the  still  lakes  or  rivers,  one  may  know 
that  it  is  the  unhappy  fisherman  trying  to  tell  of  the 
misfortunes  that  befell  him  on  the  sea.  The  same 
Indians  say  that  the  other  wicked  fisherman  was 
changed  into  a  crow;  but  I  feel  quite  offended  to  have 
such  a  thing  as  that  said,  for  the  crows  are  near  rela- 
tives of  mine.  So  are  the  magpies  and  the  jays.  We 


THE   MAGPIE. 


64  777^   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

all  belong  to  the  Corvidce,  or  crow  family,  and  people 
have  told  stories  about  other  members  of  that  family 
beside  myself.  You  know  that  some  people  have  an 

idea  that  it  is  unlucky  to 
meet  a  magpie.  They  say 
that  the  magpie  was  the 
only  bird  that  refused  to 
go  into  the  ark  with  Noah. 
This  magpie  would  sit  on 
the  roof  of  the  ark  and  jab- 
ber to  itself  about  all  the  beings  that  were  drowning  in 
the  water.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  the  magpie  was 
so  bad.  If  there  were  any  magpies  in  those  days  I 
think  that  they  went  into  the  ark  like  sensible  birds. 
I  am  sure  that  the  ravens  went  in,  for  Noah  sent  one 
out  afterwards,  you  remember.  But  there  are  people 
who  dislike  magpies  very  much,  and  many  persons  in 
England  have  a  silly  notion  that  no  one  should  ever 
throw  away  any  hair  that  has  been  cut  from  his  or  her 
head,  for  fear  that  a  bird  should  find  the  hair  and  use  it 
in  making  its  nest.  And  those  people  believe  that,  if 
this  should  happen,  the  person  on  whose  head  the  hair 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  65 

grew  would  die.  If  the  bird  that  found  the  hair  were  a 
magpie,  the  people  believe  that  the  person  would  die 
"  within  a  year  or  within  a  day." 

It  is  astonishing  how  many  queer  stories  have  been 
told  about  us  birds.  There  are  the  plovers,  those  long- 
legged  birds  that  wade  in  shallow  water  and  live  on 
worms  and  such  things.  Some  people  call  these  birds 
"  the  wandering  Jews,"  because  there  is  a  story  that  the 
plovers  contain  the  souls  of  those  Jews  that  assisted  at 
the  crucifixion  of  Christ,  and  were  always  after  con- 
demned to  inhabit  the  bodies  of  birds.  And  there  are 
persons  who  think  that  any 
one  who  hears  a  covey  of 
plovers  passing  overhead  will 
soon  have  bad  luck.  But  if 
those  people  wrere  not  so  fool- 
ish they  might  learn  that  the 
plovers  are  only  leaving  their 
old  home  and  flying  to  a  new 

one.  The  reason  why  the  plovers  have  their  name  is 
that  they  make  such  changes  in  their  homes  during  the 
rainy  season  in  autumn. 


THE    PLOVER. 


66  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

I  will  tell  you  one  more  queer  thing  about  birds,  and 
then  I  must  stop,  or  folks  will  begin  to  think  that  I  am 
becoming  as  great  a  talker  as  the  blue  jays.  I  hope  I 
shall  never  quarrel  as  much  as  they  do,  though.  Well, 
the  thing  that  I  was  going  to  tell  you  is  about  the 
swallows.  You  know  them,  don't  you  ?  I  am  sure 
you  must.  In  Volhynia,  which  is  a  part  of  Western 
Russia,  the  common  people  believe  that  the  souls  of 
dead  children  come  back  in  the  spring  in  the  shape  of 
swallows  and  go  to  the  villages,  where  the  children 
lived,  and  try  by  soft  twitterings  to  comfort  the  lonely 
fathers  and  mothers  that  were  left  behind.  And  I  sup- 
pose that  many  a  mother  has  looked  .at  a  swallow  skim- 
ming by  and  has  wondered  if  it  could  be  her  own  little 
boy  or  girl  coming  to  comfort  her.  Of  course  it  could 
not  be.  No  child's  soul  could  ever  come  back  in  that 
way.  But  I  think  that  no  boy  in  Volhynia  would  dare 
to  throw  a  stone  at  a  swallow  if  he  thought  that  it  was 
his  own  little  brother  coming  to  see  him.  Once  a  good 
man  used  to  call  the  birds  and  all  other  creatures  his 
"  brothers  and  sisters."  I  do  not  think  he.  was  very  far 
wrong;  for  the  Father  that  created  men  made  us  also. 


'THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  67 


A    NEW    ACQUAINTANCE. 

Allow  me  to  introduce  myself  to  you.     Al- 
though you  do  not  know  me,  I   presume  that 
you  are  acquainted  with  my  parents  and  rela- 
tives.    They  are    the    little   whirligig    beetles. 
WHIRLIGIG    You  often  see  them  whirling  about  on  top  of 

liEETLE 

the   water    going  so    fast    that    your    eye   can 
hardly  follow  them. 

I  shall  be  a  beetle,  too,  and  go  whirling  some  day. 
Just  now  I  am  a  thin,  yellowish-white  thing,  as  you 
see,  looking  something  like  a  centipede.  I  have  gills 
on  my  sides  and  I  always  keep  these  gills  in  motion. 
Often  I  do  this  by  wriggling  up  in  the  water  for  a  few 
inches  and  then  letting  myself  sink  to  the 
bottom  again,  with  my  white  gills  stretching 
out  like  plumes  on  each  side  of  me.  The  only 
thing  that  I  fear  is  that  now  when  I  am  becom- 

BEETLE. 

ing  so  nice  and  plump,  some  hungry  water-scor- 
pion may  happen  to  see  me  and  think  that  I  look  fat 
enough  to  be  eaten.     Water-scorpions  are  always  the 


68  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

enemies  of  us  whirligig-larvae,  and  I'll  be  glad  when  the 
time  comes  for  me  to  go  up  to  the  top  of  the  water  and 
make  a  cocoon  on  some  leaf  growing  there.  When  I 
come  out  of  my  sleep  in  that  cocoon,  which  will  not  be 
for  a  month  or  so  after  going  into  it,  I  shall  be  a  perfect 
whirligig,  and  shall  jump  right  into  the  water. 

I  hope  I  shall  have  more  sense  than  some  whirligig 
beetles  have,  for  my  ma  says  that  in  the  Indian  Ocean 
there  is  an  island  where  invalids  go  to  be  cured  by 

some  mineral  waters,  and  there,  in  a 
little  lake,  live  a  number  of  a  certain 
kind  of  whirligig  beetles,  and  the 
sick  folks  amuse  themselves  by  fish- 

SCORP ION-BUG   (water).  J 

ing  for  the  beetles  with  lines  that  are 
baited  with  pieces  of  red  cloth.  The  whirligig  beetjes 
attack  the  red  cloth,  and  are  caught  themselves  some- 
times, I  guess. 

We  whirligig  beetles  have  another  name  by  which 
wise  folks  almost  always  call  us,  and  that  is  "  Gyrin- 
idae ;  "  but  that  only  means  the  "  Whirling  Family." 

It  is  funny  to  think  what  kind  of  eyes  I  shall  have 
when  I  become  a  beetle.  My  folks  all  have  such  eyes, 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


69 


IIKAZ1LIAN 
WHIRLIGIG. 


so  I  know  that  I'll  have  them,  too.  Our  folks  look  as 
though  they  had  four  eyes ;  two  that  look  upward  and 
two  that  look  downward.  The  lower  ones  are 
placed  almost  under  the  head  of  the  beetle,  and 
of  course  are  always  beneath  the  surface  of 
the  water.  So  my  folks  can  look  up  into  the 
air  and  down  into  the  water  at  the  same  time. 
That  is  very  nice,  because  then  they  can  be  watching 
for  any  little  flies  or  living  things  that  come  within 
reach,  and  yet  can  be  looking  to  see  that  no  fish  or 
insect  swims  up  from  below  to  catch  them. 
If  any  fish  tries  to  catch  a  whirling  beetle, 
the  fish  may  be  disappointed,  for  my  rela- 
tives can  fly  right  up  into  the  air,  if  they  I  }1 
see  any  such  danger  at  hand. 

My  relatives  do  not  whirl  in  the  winter- 
time after  the  weather  becomes  cold,  but 
they  come  down  to  the  bottom  of  the  water 
and  hide  themselves  under  stones  or  in  the 
water-weeds,  or  else  they  burrow  into  the  mud  and  try 
to  keep  warm  that  way. 

Some  of  my  big  tropical  relatives  are  as  much  as 


RANATRA  FUSCA. 


70  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET., 

two  thirds  of  an  inch  long ;  and  my  cousins  in   Brazil 
have  astonishingly  long  front  legs 

But  I  must  stop  talking,  for  I  know  a  stick  is  com- 
ing. That  is,  he  pretends  to  be  a  stick ;  but  he  isn't ; 
that  is  the  worst  of  it.  He  is  a  long,  narrow  bug, 
named  Ranatra;  and  just  when  you  think  that  he  is 

dead,  he  always  becomes  alive 
and  catches  something  with  those 
crooked  front  legs  of  his,  and  hangs 
the  insect  on  that  sharp  beak,  and 

porrorhy nc_hLy-   ^ 

sucks  out  the  juice  from   his  poor 
victim.     I  am  going  to  hide. 

I  do  wish,  though,  that  I  had  time  to  tell  you  about 
a  funny-looking  relative  of  mine.  His  name  is  Porro- 
rhynchus,  and  that  queer  word  means  something  about 
a  "  snout,"  because  this  relative  of  mine  has  a  pointed 
snout  like  a  pig.  But  I  cannot  stop  to  talk  about  him 
now.  Danger  is  too  near. 


THE   CLUB'S   PAMPHLET. 


THE    WORK    OF    THE    WALKING-STICKS. 


I  am  going  to  hold  on  to  this  tree  and  try  to  live, 
even  if  the  leaves  do  all  tumble  off  and  the  other  walk- 
ing-sticks all  die.  A  great  many  of  my  relatives  have 
died  lately.  It  is  the  fate  of  walking-sticks  to  be  sensi- 
tive to  frost,  and  to  fall  with 
the  leaves  of  the  tree  that  they 
have  been  eating.  But  there 
are  a  few  more  leaves  left  on 
this  oak  and  I  will  not  despair 
of  living  just  yet. 

It  does  not  seem  now  as  it 
did  in  the  summer-time.  Then, 
if  you  had  come  into  these 
woods,  you  would  have  heard 
a  queer  kind  of  seething  noise 
that  was  made  by  so  many  of 
us  at  work  eating  the  leaves.  For  there  were  hundreds 
and  hundreds  of  us  walking-sticks  this  summer.  This 
was  the  right  year  for  us.  You  know  that  we  are  plen- 


DIAl'HEKOMKKA    1  KMORA  TA. 


72  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

tiful  only  every  other  year,  because  it  usually  takes 
about  two  years  for  our  eggs  to  hatch.  Some  are  only 
one  year  in  hatching,  and  so  you  will  find  some  walking- 
sticks  every  year  if  you  know  where  to 
look  for  them. 

But  I  was  between  one  and  two  years  in 
coming  out.     The   black,   polished,  white- 
OF  DIM-HE-    striped  egg  that  was  mine  had  lain  for  two 


ROM  ERA      FEMO- 


(enlarge^,     winters    on    the    ground    under    the   dead 

(a.)  ventral  view. 

v.)  tide *««,.  leaves  beneath  some  trees  before  the  May 
morning  came  when  I  pushed  open  the  lid  of  my  egg 
and  crawled  out  into  the  world.  My  egg  looked  a  good 
deal  like  a  seed  of  some  tree,  and  you  might  have  taken 
it  to  be  that,  if  you  had  found  it.  There  were  a  great 
many  such  eggs  under  those  leaves.  You  could  have 
scraped  together  quite  a  pile  of  them.  But  the  walking- 
stick  eggs  a  little  way  from  me  met  with  an  accident ; 
for  there  was  a  fire  among  those  dead  leaves  one  day 
and  it  burnt  the  eggs  so  that  they  never  hatched. 

When  I  crawled  out  of  my  egg  I  was  very  small,  but 
I  was  about  the  same  shape  that  I  am  now.  I  wore  a 
pale  yellowish-green  suit  of  clothes  then,  though,  instead 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  73 

of  a  grayish-brown  such  as  I  wear  now.  It  was  fortu- 
nate for  me  that  I  was  green,  for  I  lived  near  the 
ground  and  I  was  easily  hidden  in  the  .green  grass. 

Sister  Diapheroma  was  not  so  careful  to  hide  as  I 
was,  and  she  was  gobbled  up  by  a  wandering  turkey,  as 
a  reward  for  her  stupidity.  Numbers  of  my  cousins, 

•       : 

too,  were  eaten  by  hungry  chickens. 

I  was  about  six  weeks  in  getting  my  full  growth,  and 
I  moulted  two  times.  During  those  days  we  walking- 
sticks  lived  on  those  trees  over  beyond  the  edge  of  this 
wood.  But  one  day,  about  July,  our  food  gave  out. 
Every  leaf  was  gone  from  our  tree-pantries. 

Cousin  Specter  Stick  was  the  one  that  ate  the  last 
leaf.  We  called  him  that  because, 
although  we  were  all  thin,  yet  he  was 
the  thinnest  of  us.  He  had  a  pretty 
good  appetite,  though,  and  that  was  the 
reason  why  he  ate  the  last  leaf.  I  have 
always  noticed  that  thin  folks  can  eat 
about  as  much  as  fat  ones,  haven't  you  ? 

"  We  must  move,"  said  Cousin  Shadow,  crawling  off 
a  bare  limb  of  the  tree  and  hurrying  to  the  fence. 


74  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

"  So  I  say,"  cried  Cousin  Long-Shanks.  "  Come  on, 
everybody  ; "  and  leaving  the  seared  and  leafless  trees, 
the  whole  army  of  us  walking-sticks  followed,  covering 
the  ground  and  the  fence  rails  and  crowding  on  one 
another  in  our  haste  to  get  over  to  these  woods  for 
dinner.  Little  did  we  care  if  a  farmer's  boy  did  cross 

• 

our  path  as  we  neared  the  woods.  We  climbed  and 
crawled  all  over  him,  too,  and  he  picked  us  off  as  well 
as  he  could  and  then  he  ran  away. 

But  he  did  not  get  rid  of  us  all.  Two  stuck  to  his 
back.  One  was  Cousin  Lean  and  the  other  was  Cousin 
Thin.  I  expect  that  the  boy  afterwards  dropped  them 
somewhere  else,  for  I  have  never  seen  them  since.  In 
this  manner  I  lost  two  of  the  companions  of  my  child- 
hood. I  suppose  that  the  boy  was  afraid  of  them,  for  a 
good  many  people  believe  that  we  are  poisonous  and 
can  sting  or  bite  ;  but  that  is  not  true.  The  only  harm 
that  we  do  is  in  eating  the  leaves  of  trees.  People  say 
that  any  tree  that  has  been  stripped  of  its  leaves  by  us 
will  die  within  the  next  three  years. 

The  minute  we  came  into  the  woods  we  began  to 
climb  the  trees.  And  here  we  have  stayed  and  eaten 


THE  CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


75 


leaves,  going  from  one  tree  to  another,  all  through  the 
summer.  By  September  we  had  managed  to  make 
the  trees  look  peretty  badly.  By  that  time  we  were 
well  mixed  up  as  to  size,  too ;  for  walking-sticks  that 
had  forgotten  to  hatch  in  May  kept  hatching  during 
the  summer,  and  even  now  I 
think  perhaps  you  might  find 
some  little  walking-sticks. 
There  were  a  few  big  walking- 
sticks  that  never  changed 
their  color  but  remained  green 
to  the  end  of  their  days. 
Some  folks  do,  you  know. 
But  none  of  us  walking-sticks 
grew  as  much  as  some  of  my 
tropical  relatives  must.  For 
some  of  them,  I  am  told,  are 
over  a  foot  long --not  measuring  their  legs,  either. 

One  day  the  first  leaf  fell  from  this  tree. 

"  Did  you  throw  that  down  ?  "  asked  Cousin  Specter- 
Stick. 

"  No,"  said  I.     "  I'm  afraid  this  tree  is  becoming  old." 


FULL-CKOWN   WALKING-STICKS. 


76  THE  CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

Then  another  and  another  leaf  fell. 

"  I'm  so  cold,"  mumbled  Cousin  Needle.  "  I  -  - 1 
don't  believe  I  can  hold  on  much  longer,"  and  suddenly 
Needle  lost  her  hold  and  fell  to  the  ground. 

"  Poor  thing!  "  said  Cousin  Green-coat,  peering  down 
through  the  branches'.  "  She  was  hatched  with  the 
leaves,  and  she  died  with  them.  We  shall  all  follow 
her  soon."  And  his  words  were  prophetic;  for  there 
was  a  heavy  frost  that  night,  and  in  the  morning  Green- 
coat  lay  prostrate  beside  Cousin  Needle. 

After  these  two  deaths  others  rapidly  followed  till 
the  ground  was  strewn  with  the  bodies  of  my  dear  rela- 
tives. The  leaves  rustled  down  and  buried  them  out 
of  sight. 

But,  as  I  said  before,  I  don't  intend  to  die,  if  all  my 
cousins  do.  I  have  been  thinking,  though,  that  I  don't 
believe  that  my  Brazilian  relatives  have  any  colder 
times  than  I  am  having  here.  Those  Brazilian  walking- 
sticks  that  I  mean,  spend  their  days  under  water  in  the 
mountain  streams,  and  although  I  do  not  see  how  they 
can  live  so,  yet  I  don't  think  they  can  be  much  colder 
than  I  am  in  this  tree  nowadays.  Anyway,  I  am  so 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  77 

much  the  color  of  this  bark  that  I  think  no  bird  will 
look  between  the  leafless  branches  and  find  me,  and  I 
am  going  to  hold  on  as  long  as  I  can. 


THE  FOLKS  THAT  LIVED  IN  A  JELLY  GLASS. 

• 

I  am  one  of  the  folks.  This  is  an  old  jelly  glass,  and 
it  has  only  water  in  it  now,  and  we  folks  live  in  the 
water.  Every  day  a  girl  comes  and  takes  up  this  glass 
and  looks  through  a  microscope  at  us.  And  every  day, 
when  she  sets  our  glass  down  after  looking,  she  says, 
"  What  queer  things  they  are  !  " 

She  means  us  water-folks,  or  "  water-fleas,"  as  we  are 
called.  There  are  several  kinds  of  us  in  this  glass. 
We  are  all  called  "  water-fleas ; "  but  the  different  kinds 
of  us  have  separate  names,  too.  Now  my  name  is  such 
a  long,  hard  one  that  I  cannot  expect  you  to  remember 
it,  and,  indeed,  I  do  not  believe  that  I  could  remember 
it  myself,  if  that  girl  did  not  say  it  over  everyday  when 
she  sees  me.  This  is  my  name :  Cyclops  communis. 

Isn't  that  an  awful  name  ?     But  then  it  isn't  so  bad 


78  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

when  you  know  what  it  means.  I  get  my  first  name 
from  the  Cyclops,  a  race  of  giants  that  the  old  Greek 
folks  used  to  believe  in.  The  Greeks  said  these  giants 

had    only  one   eye    apiece,  and   they 

wore  this  eye  in  the  middle  of  the 
forehead.  It  may  be  that  the  Greeks 
got  this  idea  from  seeing  some 
miners  wearing  a  lantern  apiece  on 

"WATER-KLEA"  (enlarged). 

the  forehead  ;  who  knows  ? 

And,  you  see,  that  is  just  where  I  wear  my  eyes.  I 
have  two  eyes,  but  they  are  so  close  together  that  they 
make  only  one  spot  in  the  middle  of  my  forehead,  and 
when  my  folks  were  first  named  people  thought  we  had 
only  one  eye  apiece,  like  the  Cyclops. 

The  other  part  of  my  name  —  communis--  means 
"  common."  So  you  see  my  whole  name  taken  together 
means  "  the  common  Cyclops." 

I  don't  think  that  many  people  would  be  likely  to 
notice  me  without  using  a  microscope.  I  am  big 
enough  so  that  I  can  just  be  seen  without  that,  but  still 
I  am  so  very  little  that,  unless  people  knew  exactly  my 
shape,  they  would  not  be  likely  to  notice  me. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


79 


I  heard,  the  other  day,  of  a  poor  Cyclops  that  had  to 
carry  a  sort  of  little  tree  on  his  back.  This  microscopic 
tree's  name  is  Vorticella.  I  am  glad  that  I  do  not  have 
to  carry  anything  like  that,  although  Vorticella  is  not 
big  enough  to  prevent  a  Cyclops  from  swimming 
around  very  freely.  Still,  you  know,  it  isn't  pleasant 
to  be  always  obliged  to  carry  things  around  when  you 
don't  want  to. 

There   are  a  great    number   of  two   other   kinds   of 
"  water-fleas  "  in  this  glass.     One 
kind   is   called    Daphnia,  and    the 
other  Cypris.     And  there  is  a  very 
queer    individual    living    on    that 
leaf.     She    is    called    the    "  Brick- 
maker,"    because,    if     you     look 
through  a  microscope,  you  can  see 
that  she  lives   in   a  sort  of  little 
tower  that  looks  as  though  it  were 
made  of  very  small  bricks.     This 
"  brick-maker's  "  other  name  is  Melicerta  ringens.     She 
makes  the  brick  herself,  and  she  never  has  to  hire  a  lot 
of  masons  to  come  and  pile  the  bricks  up  so  as  to  build 


THE  ARBORESCENT  VORTICELLA. 
(Bell-shaped  animalcule. ) 


8o 


THE  CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


CYPRIS     UNIFASCIATA. 

(•Enlarged.) 


her  tower,  but   she  does  that   herself,  too.      And  she 
builds  so  well  that  she  leaves  no  holes  in  the  walls  of 
her  tower.      It  is  perfectly  constructed. 
It  takes  her  about  three  minutes  to 
make  a  brick.     Then  she   puts  that  in 
the    right    place   and    begins    to    manu- 
facture another  brick,  and  so  on. 

Once  a  woman  had  one  of  these 
brick-makers  that  had  made  a  very 
high  tower  —  so  high  that  all  that  could  be  seen  of  the 
brick-maker  was  just  part  of  her  head  when  she  put 
it  up  above  her  tower  to  get  food. 

*The  woman  thought  that  she  would  try  an  experi- 
ment ;  so  one  day  when  the  brick-maker  had  sunk  far 
inside  of  her  house,  down   almost  to 
its  floor,  the  woman  took  hold  of  the 
little    tower   and    cut   off   about   one 
third   of   it  at    the    upper   end.     The 
brick-maker  did   not   know  that  any- 
thing had  happened,  and  pretty  soon 
she  began  to  put  up  her  head  and  came  up  above  her 
house.     She  was  beginning  to  unfold  her  head,  which 


DAl'lINIA    1'ULEX. 

(Enlarged. ) 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


81 


looks,  when  it  is  fully  unrolled,  a  good  deal  like  the 
petals  of  some  sort  of  flower,  when  all  of  a  sudden  she 
noticed  that  the  upper  part  of  her  house  was  gone. 

Down  went  the  poor,  frightened  brick-maker  inside 
of  her  tower  and  hid  for  a 
little,  perhaps  wondering  how 
such  an  accident  had  happened 
to  her  precious  home.  Up  she 
came  again,  and  back  she 
rushed  several  times. 

By  and  by,  when  several 
hours  had  passed,  and  no 
enemy  had  appeared  to  do  her 
harm,  the  poor  brick-maker 
recovered  from  her  fright 
enough  to  come  out  and  begin 
brick-making;  for  of  course 

MELICERTA  Rixr.ENS  (greatly  enlarged). 

that     broken     house    of    hers 

must  be  mended.       It  would  not  do  to  live  in  such  a 

spoiled  home. 

So  Melicerta  began  to  make  bricks.      When  she  had 
worked  long  enough  to  finish  one  brick  she  bent  down 


82  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

to  try  and  find  out  where  she  should  put  it.  She  could 
not  seem  to  understand,  at  first,  where  she  ought  to  put 
her  brick,  and  she  wasted  some  of  her  brick  material 
before  she  could  find  out.  But  at  last  she  understood 
just  where  the  break  was,  and  then  she  worked  very 
busily  and  quickly.  Any  one  looking  through  the 
microscope  could  tell  which  were  the  new  bricks  and 
which  the  old ;  for  the  new  ones  were  of  a  very  much 
lighter  color  than  the  others. 

Once  in  a  while  the  baby  brick-makers  will  not  want 
to  leave  their  mother  and  go  off  and  live  in  towers  by 
themselves.  I  am  sure  I  don't  blame  them  very  much. 
It  must  be  lonely  in  a  tower,  even  if  you  have  made  it 
yourself  and  are  proud  of  your  work.  So  these  little 
ones  just  fasten  their  towers  to  their  mamma's  tower, 
and  they  all  live  together,  though  each  baby  has  a  tower 
of  its  own.  But  brave  baby  brick-makers  just  leave 
their  mammas  and  go  off  and  build  their  towers  on 
water-weeds  wherever  they  choose. 

There  is  another  funny-looking  thing  in  this  glass. 
His  name  is  Hydra,  and  when  he  walks  he  humps  like 
a  "  measuring-worm."  I  don't  like  him  very  much. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  83 

He  eats  things  that  he  catches  with  a  lot  of  little  feelers 
of  his.  That  Hydra  caught  a  small  red  worm  the  other 
day  and  killed  it. 

Hydra,  too,  gets  his  name  from  the  Greeks.  They 
used  to  believe  in  a  monster  named  Hydra,  that  had 
nine  heads.  And  the  Greeks  had  a  story  that  one  day 
a  man  named  Hercules  went  out  to  fight  with  this 
monster.  Hercules  went  at  him  and  tried  to  cut  off 
one  of  his  heads.  But,  behold,  as  soon  as  one  of  the 
Hydra's  heads 
tumbled  off, 
two  others  grew 
in  place  of  that 

THE   HYDR/E,  OR   FRESH-WATER    POLYPS. 

one.      So    the 

more  Hercules  chopped,  the  more  heads  Hydra  had. 
But  at  last,  Hercules,  with  the  help  of  his  servant,  man- 
aged to  burn  up  all  the  heads  but  one.  This  head  could 
not  be  killed,  and  so  Hercules  buried  it  under  a  rock. 

And  the  Hydra  that  is  in  our  jelly-glass  says  that  the 
reason  why  he  received  his  name  is  that,  like  that  old 
Greek  Hydra,  he  has  the  power  of  making  any  part  that 
has  been  cut  off,  grow  again.  If  you  were  to  cut  off 


84  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

any  of  Hydra's  feelers  they  would  grow  again.  If  you 
should  cut  him  in  two  lengthwise,  it  would  not  be  very 
long  before  the  two  parts  would  be  two  perfect  animals; 
and  so  there  would  be  two  Hydrae  fishing  for  prey  in 
this  glass ;  and  I  am  sure  that  we  should  not  like  that 
at  all.  One  is  enough.  And  if  you  should  take  Hydra 
and  cut  him  into  little  pieces,  each  piece  would  become 
a  real  Hydra  after  a  time.  It  is  wonderful  how  much 
chopping  up  Hydra  will  stand. 


THE  MEMORIES  OF  A  HEDGEHOG. 

"  Ma,"  squeaked  Spiney,  "  wake  up." 

Mrs.  Hedgehog  stirred  a  little  and  looked  at  her 
infant.  "  What  is  the  matter  ?  "  said  she. 

"  I  want  you  to  tell  us  a  story,"  said  Spiney.  "  You 
spend  most  all  night  hunting  bugs,  and  you  are  too 
busy  to  talk  then,  so  won't  you  talk  now?  " 

"  Yes,  do,  ma,"  whined  Prickles. 

"  What  shall  the  story  be  about  ? "  asked  Mrs. 
Hedgehog. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  85 

"  About  when  you  were  little  like  us,"  said  Needles. 

"  Oh !  I  can't  remember  as  far  back  as  that,"  said 
Mrs.  Hedgehog. 

"  Well,  tell  us  the  first  thing  that  you  remember," 
said  Spiney. 

"The  first?"  said  his  mother;  "I  believe  that  the 
first  thing  that 
I  r  em  ember 
about  is  my 
being  put  into 
a  kitchen  in  a 
house  in  Lon- 
don." 

EUROPEAN  HEDGEHOG  AND  LITTLE  ONES. 

"  What     did 
they  put  you  there  for?  "  asked  Needles,  much  interested. 

"  They  wanted  me  to  catch  cockroaches,"  explained 
Mrs.  Hedgehog.  "  The  kitchen  was  overrun  with  them 
before  I  arrived,  but  I  chased  them  till  I  had  caught 
them  all." 

"  Were  folks  good  to  you  there  ?  "  asked  Spiney. 

"  Most  of  the  time,"  said  Mrs.  Hedgehog.  "  I 
thought  that  folks  liked  me  very  well.  But  I  heard  the 


86  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

cook  talking  to  the  butcher  one  day.  The  butcher  had 
been  praising  me  on  account  of  the  way  in  which  I 
had  cleared  out  the  cockroaches,  when  the  cook  an- 
swered, '  Yes  ;  but  the  miserable  thing  whines  so  at 
night  that  we  can  hardly  bear  it.' 

"  '  Does  it  ?  "  said  the  butcher ;  and  then  he  went  on 
to  tell  the  cook  that  he  had  once  heard  that  if  any  per- 
son wanted  to  be  able  to  see  as  well  in  the  night  as  in 
the  day-time,  all  the  person  would  have  to  do  would  be 
to  get  the  eye  of  a  hedgehog  and  fry  it  in  oil,  and  keep 
the  oil  in  a  brass  vessel,  and  such  oil  as  that  would 
make  a  person  able  to  see  at  night. 

"  '  I  wish  I  could  try  it,'  said  the  cook,  looking  at  me 
in  a  very  alarming  manner,  as  if  she  fully  believed  what 
the  butcher  had  said. 

"  Indeed,  so  scared  was  I  for  fear  that  the  cook 
would  take  one  of  my  eyes  and  try  that  experiment, 
.that  I  resolved  to  run  away. 

"  And  so  I  did  one  night  slip  out  to  the  street.  I 
was  going  along,  when  I  came  to  a  lamp-post  and  heard 
a  girl  say,  '  Oh !  see  that  dear  little  hedgehog, '  and 
some  one  caught  me  up.  Of  course  I  rolled  into  a  ball 


THE  CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  87 

immediately,  but  it  was  of  no  use.  The  man  carried 
me  to  a  wagon  and  laid  me  in  it,  and  away  we  went,  the 
little  girl  bending  down  from  the  seat  to  see  me. 

"  We  drove  far  out  into  the  country,  and  there  we 
stopped  at  a  house.  But  the  people  did  not  fasten  me 
in  securely  that  night,  and  I  ran  away  and  had  a  fine 
feast  on  a  lot  of  worms  and  slugs  that  I  found.  I 
caught  a  toad,  too.  In  the  morning  I  hid  in  a  thicket 
where  I  made  myself  a  hole  about  six  inches  deep  and 
lined  it  with  leaves.  I  slept  through  the  winter,  and 
this  summer  I  fixed  this  nest  with  moss  and  leaves 
and  made  such  a  good  roof  that  the  rain  could  not  come 
through.  And  here  one  day  for  company  I  had  you 
three  children  --Spiney  and  Prickles  and  Needles. 
You  were  all  blind  and  white,  and  had  just  the  begin- 
nings of  soft  spines  on  you,  instead  of  the  hard  ones 
you  have  now." 

"  I'm  glad  you  ran  away,"  said  Prickles.  "  It  would 
have  been  dreadful  if  the  cook  had  taken  out  one  of 
your  eyes." 

"Ah!"  said  Mrs.  Hedgehog  mournfully,  "that 
would  only  have  been  treating  me  as  cruelly  as  many 


THE  CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


of  my  folks  have  been  treated  by  ignorant  people.  I 
remember  having  once  heard  a  man  say  that  hedgehogs 
stole  the  milk  of  such  cows  as  lay  on  the  meadows  at 
night.  I  suppose  he  believed  that;  but  I  don't  see  how 
a  hedgehog  could  do  such  a  thing,  and  I'm  very  sure  it 
isn't  true.  And  then  there  have  been  people  silly 
enough  to  believe  that  hedgehogs  went 
into  orchards  and  rolled  under  apple-trees 
till  the  apples  stuck  to  the  hedgehogs' 
spines,  and  then  the  animals  would  walk 
off  with  the  fruit.  People  in  old  times 
used  to  take  the  skins  of  hedgehogs  Tor 
hackling  hemp,  and  I  remember  that  I 
once  saw  a  calf  wearing  a  muzzle  made 
out  of  the  prickles  of  some  poor  hedgehog." 
"  What  did  the  calf  wear  it  for  ?  "  asked 
Spiney. 

"  Because  folks  were  trying  to  wean  the 
calf,"  said  Mrs.  Hedgehog. 
"  I'm  glad  that  I   have  my  eyes  open  at  last,"  said 
Prickles.     "  Maybe   some  night   I  shall  go  abroad  far 
enough  to  see  such  wonderful  things  myself." 


SOUND-PRODUCING 
QUILLS  FROM 
THE  TAIL  OF  THE 
PORCUPINE. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


89 


"  Yes,"  said  his  ma,  "  I   hope   so.     Your  American 
cousins,  the    Porcupines,  have   their  eyes   open   when 
they  are   little,  and   are 
never  blind  like  hedge- 
hog children." 

"  How  smart  they 
must  be,"  said  Needles. 

"Yes,"  said  Mrs. 
Hedgehog,  "so  smart 
that  they  do  not  have 
to  stay  with  their 
mothers  very  long. 
The  porcupines  are 
queer  about  one  thing. 
At  the  end  of  their  tails 


BRAZILIAN   TREE   PORCUPINE. 


they  have  some  strange 
kind  of  quills,  and  when 
the  porcupines  are  angry  they  rattle  these  together." 

"  Shall    I    ever    have    such    a    fine    rattle  ? "    asked 
Needles. 

"No,"  said  his  mother. 

"  Well,  then,  I  wish  that  I  had  been  a  porcupine," 


90  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

said  Needles  fretfully,  "so  that  I  needn't  ever  have 
been  blind  and  could  have  a  rattle." 

"  And  you  might  be  caught  by  Indians,  too,  and  have 
all  your  quills  taken  away  and  used  by  them  as  orna- 
ments," said  his  mother.  "  You  had  better  be  happy 
to  be  a  little  hedgehog,  or  '  hedge-pig,'  as  some  folks 
have  called  us.  Some  of  those  porcupines  are  smart, 
though.  One  in  Brazil  can  climb  trees  beautifully,  and 
hold  himself  on  by  his  long  tail.  And  I  have  heard 
that  in  that  country  some  stone  porcupines  have  been 
found." 

"  Real  stone  ?  "  asked  Spiney.  "  Oh  !  I  wouldnt  be 
a  porcupine  for  anything  if  I  had  to  be  turned  to  stone." 

"  You  silly  thing!  "  said  his  mother,  and  off  she  went 
to  get  some  beetles. 


A    SERPENTS    SPEECH. 

I  know  you  do  not  like  me.  No  one  likes  snakes. 
So  I  am  going  to  stay  hidden  in  this  hole  while  I  talk 
to  you.  Then  I  shall  not  disturb  you  by  my  looks, 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  91 

and  perhaps    you  can  understand    better  what    I   say. 

Even  if  we  snakes  are  detested  nowadays,  we  were 
thought  a  great  deal  of  in  old  times.  In  a  temple  in 
old  Athens  in  Greece,  a  snake  used  to  be  kept  in  a  cage, 
and  the  people  honored  this  serpent  so  much  that  they 
called  it "  The  Guardian  Spirit  of  the  Temple ; "  and  they 
thought  that  this  snake  had  a  soul.  I  am  sure  that  I 
pity  that  poor  snake.  I  had  rather  be  free  to  wind  in 
and  out  of  these  rocks  than  be  shut  up  in  a  cage  all  my 
life  just  to  be  reverenced  by  people.  Much  good  rev- 
erence does  a  snake. 

But  the  Romans  were  just  as  foolish  as  the  Greeks. 
The  Romans  thought  that  snakes  were  omens  of  good, 
and  for  that  reason  they  were  kept  as  pets  in  the 
Roman  houses,  where  they  hid  about  the  altars  of  the 
household  gods,  and  when  visitors  came  in,  these  pet 
snakes  would  come  out  like  cats  or  dogs,  to  beg  for 
something  to  eat.  But  those  kind  of  snakes  were 
harmless,  and  really  were  of  some  use  at  first,  because 
they  caught  the  rats  and  mice.  But  after  a  time  there 
were  so  many  snakes  in  Rome  that  the  people  did 
not  know  what  to  do.  They  did  not  dare  to  kill  the 


92  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

holy  snakes,  but  it  is  suspected  that  many  of  the  fires 
in  the  city  of  Rome  were  started  on  purpose,  by  people 
who  hoped  in  this  way  to  destroy  the  serpents'  eggs. 

There  was  an  old  story  told  about  serpents  and  their 
becoming  young.  The  people  said  that  Jupiter,  who 
was  a  Roman  god  that  the  people  believed  in,  was 
going  to  send  a  great  gift  to  men.  The  gift  was  that 
of  everlasting  youth,  and  after  men  should  receive  it, 
none  of  them  would  ever  grow  old  any  more.  Well, 
Jupiter,  so  they  said,  laid  this  gift  on  the  back  of  a 
donkey  and  told  him  to  bear  it  to  men.  So  the  donkey 
went  along,  but  by  and  by  he  began  to  grow  thirsty, 
and  when  he  came  to  a  fountain  he  wanted  a  drink. 
But  a  serpent  was  guarding  the  fountain  and  refused  to 
let  the  donkey  have  a  drink  unless  he  would  give  him 
whatever  he  carried  on  his  back.  The  foolish  donkey 
was  so  silly  that  he  let  the  serpent  have  the  burden  in 
exchange  for  the  drink,  and  so  the  serpent  got  the  gift 
of  everlasting  youth,  and  men  never  had  it.  This  old 
story  of  course  is  not  true,  but  I  think  that  the  reason 
why  they  thought  that  snakes  had  perpetual  youth  was 
that  when  a  snake's  skin  gets  old,  every  year,  he  changes 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  93 

it,  and  so  of  course  he  looks  new.  Anyway,  I  don't 
believe  that  men  would  have  been  very  happy  if  they 
had  been  allowed  to  be  young  always.  There  would 
not  have  been  any  nice  old  grandpapas  and  grand- 
mammas in  the  world  then,  and  I  am  sure  that  would 
have  been  a  great  loss. 

Then  there  was  another  foolish  old  story  that  they 
used  to  tell  about  a  man  named  Melampus.  They  said 
that  in  front  of  Melampus'  house  there  stood  an  oak- 
tree  that  had  a  serpents'  nest  in  it.  The  servants  found 
the  old  snakes  and  killed  them,  but  Melampus  took 
care  of  the  little  snakes  and  was  kind  to  them.  One 
day  Melampus  went  to  sleep  under  the  oak-tree,  and 
while  he  slept,  the  little  snakes  came  out  and  licked  his 
ears,  and  when  he  woke,  Melampus  was  very  much 
astonished,  for  now  he  could  hear  and  understand  all 
that  the  birds  said  when  they  sang  to  one  another,  and 
all  that  the  creeping  things  said,  too. 

And  a  while  after  this  Melampus  was  taken  by  his 
enemies  and  put  into  prison.  While  he  was  there,  in 
the  night-time,  he  heard  the  wood-worms  talking  to- 
gether, and  he  understood  that  they  were  saying  that 


94  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

the  roof  of  the  'prison  was  nearly  eaten  through,  and 
that  it  would  soon  tumble  in  and  kill  Melampus  and 
the  men  who  had  taken  him  prisoner.  So,  of  course, 
Melampus  told  his  enemies  that  they  must  hurry  and 
get  out  of  that  building,  and  take  him  along,  so  as  to 
save  all  their  lives.  And  his  enemies  were  so  much 
obliged  to  him  for  warning  them  of  the  danger,  that 
they  took  him  out  of  the  building  before  the  roof  fell, 
and  rewarded  and  honored  him  for  his  wisdom. 

Don't  you  think  that  the  Greeks  and  Romans  were 
queer  people  to  believe  such  stories  ? 


A    CICADA  S    LIFE. 

I  am  seventeen  years  old.  Perhaps  you  do  not 
believe  that,  but  it  is  true.  For  seventeen  years  I  have 
lived  in  a  dark  place  underground,  and  it  is  only  during 
the  last  few  days  that  I,  with  all  my  relatives,  have  been 
up  here  where  you  could  see  us.  People  said  when 
they  first  saw  us  here,  "  The  seventeen-year  locusts 
have  come." 


THE    CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  95 

But  we  are  not  locusts  at  all.  We  belong  to  a  very 
different  division  of  insects,  and  our  real  names  are 
"  Cicadas,"  or  "  Harvest  Flies."  We  have  not  come  to 
eat  all  the  green  things  in  the  country,  the  way  locusts 
do.  If  you  look  at  us,  you  will  see  that  we  have  no 
jaws  for  eating  leaves ;  we  have  only  beaks  through 
which  we  can  draw  up  sweet  liquids.  I  heard  of  a 
woman  who  kept  a  cicada  by  giving  it  a  sponge  filled 
with  sugar  and  water.  One  sponge- 
ful  would  last  the  cicada  a  week. 

But  I  started  to  tell  you  about  our 
seventeen  years  underground.  You 
see,  when  we  cicadas  were  hatched, 
we  were  only  one  sixteenth  of  an  inch  long ;  not  half  as 
long  as  a  big  ant.  I  had  six  legs,  and  my  front  ones 
were  very  large  for  my  size,  and  they  were  shaped  so 
that  they  looked  almost  like  lobsters'  claws.  I  did  not 
have  any  wings  then,  but  I  had  a  beak  for  sucking- 
juice,  as  I  have  now. 

Well,  where  do  you  suppose  we  cicada  babies  found 
ourselves  at  first  ?  Why,  we  were  away  up  on  top  of 
an  oak-tree.  And  we  knew  that  we  must  get  down  to 


SEVENTEEN- YEAR    CICADA. 


96  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

the  ground  some  way,  because  in  the  ground  we  were 
to  live  for  seventeen  long  years.  So  how  do  you  sup- 
pose we  came  down  ?  We  did  not  take  the  trouble  to 
crawl  away  down  the  tree.  That  is  not  the  way  small 
cicadas  do.  We  had  no  wings  to  fly  down  with,  so  all 
we  did  was  just  to  run  to  the  end  of  a  branch  and  jump 
straight  off  into  the  air.  Don't  you  think  we  were 
pretty  brave  for  such  little  things  as  we  were?  How 
would  you  like  to  take  a  jump  from  the  top  of  a  high 
oak-tree?  We  had  no  idea  how  far  it  was  to  the 
ground,  but  we  came  down  all  right,  for  we  were  so 
small  that  the  fall  did  not  hurt  us  a  bit,  and  we  fell  like 
so  many  feathers. 

As  soon  as  we  were  on  the  ground  we  began  to  dig. 
That  was  what  our  broad  fore-feet  were  for,  to  be  used 
as  shovels  in  digging  our  way  into  the  earth.  After 
we  had  burrowed  in  the  ground  far  enough,  we  each 
caught  hold  of  a  root  and  began  to  draw  through  our 
beaks  the  nice  juice.  You  see,  we  had  no  mother  to 
take  care  of  us  and  feed  us.  Our  mamma  had  died 
before  we  were  hatched,  as  all  cicada  mammas  do,  and 
so  we  had  to  look  out  for  ourselves. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


97 


And  for  seventeen  long,  delightful  years  we  sucked 
juice  from  plants,  and  slept,  and  woke,  and  grew.  If  I 
had  belonged  to  another  kind  of  cicada,  I  should  have 
had  to  stay  only  thirteen  years  in  the  ground  ;  but  I  was 
the  seventeen-year  kind.  There  is  one  variety  that  has 
to  stay  only  one  year  in  the  ground. 

Well,  you  see,  there  is   not  very  much   to   be    told 

about   those    years    underground. 

/ 

It  was  just  the  same  thing  all  the 
while.  But  the  seventeen  years 
came  almost  to  an  end  after  a 
time,  and  on  our  backs  the  wing 
cases  began  to  swell,  and  we  com- 
menced to  cut  holes  up  toward 
the  surface  of  the  ground.  We 
did  not  want  to  come  out  just 
then,  but  we  were  trying  to  see 

how  it  seemed.      We  stayed  for  several  days  up  within 
six  or  eight  inches  of  the  surface  of  the  ground. 

On  pleasant  days  we  went  up  to  the  tops  of  our  holes 
and  looked  out  at  the  world,  but  when  it  rained  we 
would  rush  back  inside. 


98  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

"I  don't  think  that  the  world  is  very  pretty,"  said 
brother  Pupa,  one  day,  when  it  rained.  "  I  don't  want 
to  go  and  live  in  the  trees." 

But  a  few  nights  after  this  Pupa  changed  his  mind. 
So  did  all  of  us.  We  crawled  out  in  the  dark  of  a 
June  night,  for  we  did  not  want  any  birds  seeing  us 
and  snapping  us  up,  or  any  ants  attacking  us.  We 
looked  a  good  deal  like  beetles  crawling  along. 

For  several  nights  many  of  us  rose  from  the  earth. 
There  must  have  been  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  us. 
And  then  we  climbed  the  trees  around  us  and  began 
to  take  off  our  skins.  It  was  pretty  hard  work,  for 
our  skins  were  tough,  but  at  last  we  managed  to  split 
holes  in  our  backs  and  pull  ourselves  out  head-first. 
Then  we  were  almost  through  with  our  work  of  be- 
coming cicadas.  Our  wings  w.ere  weak  yet,  and  we 
could  not  fly,  but  in  a  short  time  our  wings  stretched 
out  and  we  were  all  right.  We  were  finished.  Our 
seventeen  years  had  come  to  an  end. 

I  heard  of  some  cicadas,  a  little  way  from  here,  that 
thought  they  were  going  to  be  drowned  in  that  rain, 
the  other  day.  They  had  not  come  out  of  their  holes, 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


99 


and  the  water  ran  in  on  them,  so  these  cicadas  went 
to  work  and  built  domes  above  the  surface  of  the 
ground,  and  in  these  domes  they  hid  so  that  the  water 
could  not  reach  them. 

Now  you  can  hear  the  sound  of  our  drums  go  whir- 
ring through  the  woods.  Some  of  us  make  that  loud 
noise  by  means  of  queer  things  that  look  like  kettle- 
drums, which  some  of  us  wear  on 
each  side  of  our  bodies.  The 
French  call  us  "  chanteuses,"  or 
"  singers,"  from  the  noises  we 
make,  but  really  the  sounds  do 
not  seem  much  like  singing.  I 
have  heard  that  there  are  cicadas 
in  other  countries  that  make  queerer  noises  still.  There 
is  a  kind  in  the  southern  part  of  Asia  that  makes  a 
noise  like  a  scissors-grinder.  A  man  who  had  never 
before  heard  the  scissors-grinder  was  approaching  an 
island  in  a  boat,  and  he  afterward  said  that  for  at  least 
a  quarter  of  an  hour  before  he  reached  that  island  he 
could  hear  the  "whir-r-r,  whir-r-r,"  of  the  scissors-grinder 
echoing  through  the  forest.  After  making  a  tremen- 


CICADA    TOWERS. 


ioo  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

dous  noise  for  some  time,  the  cicada  stopped  with  a 
"  whiz-z-z,"  just  like  the  sound  of  a  scissors-grinder's 
wheel  when  the  treadle  stops. 

And  in  South  America,  on  the  river  Amazon,  there 
is  a  queerer  kind  of  cicada ;  a  big  insect  that  begins  its 
song  by  making  a  jarring  sound  like  any  cicada,  but 
the  sound  becomes  shriller  and  shriller  till  it  ends  with 
a  long,  loud  whistle  that  sounds  like  the  whistle  of  a 
steam-engine.  Half  a  dozen  of  such  steam-whistle 
cicadas  would  be  about  as  many  as  one  would  want 
to  have  around  at  one  time,  I  should  think.  One  com- 
mon kind  of  South  American  cicada  is  very  pretty, 
for  it  has  wings  marked  with  patches  of  bright  green 

and  red. 
i 

But,  however  loudly  we  may  whirr,  we  are  not  hurt- 
ful to  people,  as  some  folks  think.  You  know  some 
say  that  we  sting  people  so  severely  that  they  some- 
times die.  But  there  is  not  a  word  of  truth  in  that 
story.  We  cannot  hurt  people,  for  we  have  nothing  to 
hurt  them  with. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


101 


A     RIDDLE     AND     ITS     ANSWER. 


I  am  going  to  give  you  a  riddle,  and  I  don't  believe 
you  can  answer  it.  The  riddle  is  this  :  What  animal 
lives  in  a  sort  of  bottle  made  by  itself,  and  has  a  kind 
of  cork  that  it  corks  itself  in 
with  ? 

There  !  I  thought  you  didn't 
know.  Well,  I  suppose  that  I'll 
have  to  tell  you,  then.  It  is  I, 
and  my  other  name  is  Serpula. 
To  think  that  I've  been  corking 
myself  in  all  my  life,  and  yet 
you  never  knew  it ! 

My  ma  and  my  grandma  and 
all  my  folks  have  had  stoppers 
to  cork  themselves  in  with.  These  stoppers  always 
fit  our  tube  exactly,  and  often  the  stoppers  are  of  beau- 
tiful colors.  I  made  this  little  tube  that  I  live  in. 
Maybe  you  have  found  broken  pieces  of  such  tubes 
down  by  the  sea-shore.  But  you  probably  have  not 


SEKl'UI.A   CONTORTRVI.ICATA. 


IO2 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


found  pieces  of  the  tubes  that  some  of  my  folks  make 
out  of  sand,  because  those  tubes  are  very  easily  broken. 
Some  of  our  tubes  are  horny,  some  are  made  out  of 

Ijme,  and  others  are  of  sand. 

Some  of   us  have   our  tubes 


where  they  can  be  seen  cov- 
ered with  water,  and  others 
bury  their  tubes  in  the  mud 
and  have  only  the  tops  of  the 
tubes  above  the  s  u  r  f  a  c  e . 
Sometimes  quite  a  number 
of  worms 


SKRI'l'I.A    Tl'BfLARlA. 


will  build  tubes  on  the  same  stone. 
Some  of  the  children  of  my  rela- 
tives do  not  live  in  tubes,  but 
crawl  along  the  bottom  of  the 
water,  and  some  kind  can  swim. 
And  over  in  Scotland  I  have  a 
very  queer  relative  that  makes  a 
web,  instead  of  a  tube,  to  live  in.  This  Scotch  cousin 
makes  its  web  of  the  very  thinnest  threads  —  thinner 
than  spiders'  threads  --so  very  thin  that  you  can  hardly 


SERPULA   TUBUI.ARIA. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


103 


SERPULA   SPIRALIS. 


see  them.  Then  there  is  another  kind  that  is  called 
the  Fan  Sabella,  and  these  relatives  of  mine  are  about 
as  thick  as  a  quill,  and  stand  up 
straight.  A  man  who  once  saw  thou- 
sands of  these  growing  in  a  river  said 
that  they  looked  like  a  field  of  corn. 
Only  you  know,  of  course, 
that  such  corn  would'  not  be  very  tall. 


A     CHIPMUNK  S     CHATTERINGS. 


If  I  were  not  sure  that  you  are  a  kind  lit- 
tle girl,  I  would  not  come  so  near  you.  I  am 
pretty  sure  that  I  should  hide  where  your 
brother  could  not  see  one  of  the  stripes  on 
my  back,  if  I  knew  that  he  were  anywhere 
around  here.  Do  you  know  the  Indian  story 
about  the  way  that  squirrels  first  came  to 
have  stripes  on  their  backs  ?  Well,  if  you 
were  a  little  Indian,  living  on  Vancouver's  Island,  per- 
haps your  grandmother  might  tell  you  this  story  about 


SERPULA 
TUBULARIA. 


104  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

the  squirrels.  Once,  long  ago,  the  Indians  say,  there 
lived  in  the  North  an  old  woman  who  caught  children 
and  killed  them.  This  wicked  old  woman  had  made 
many  a  home  sad  by  taking  away  the  little  ones,  and 
many  mothers  .had  wept  for  the  little  boys  and  girls 
that  they  never  should  see  again. 

But,  after  a  time,  the  old  woman  stole  the  little  child 
of  a  mother  who  could  not  bear  the  thought  of  his 
being  killed.  So,  in  her  sorrow,  she  cried  out  to  the 
Great  Spirit  in  the  sky  that  he  would  save  her  little  boy. 

"  Save  him  in  any  shape,"  prayed  the  poor  mother, 
"  in  any  shape,  only  save  his  life,"  and,  lo !  her  prayer 
was  answered,  for,  while  the  wicked  woman  who  had 
stolen  the  boy  still  held  him,  suddenly  under  her  fin- 
gers his  brown  Indian  skin  changed  to  fur,  his  shape 
altered,  and,  though  she  tried  to  hold  him,  yet  he 
slipped  from  her  hands  and  ran  away,  no  longer  a 
little  boy,  but  the  liveliest,  merriest  squirrel  that  ever 
lived.  But  on  his  back  were  the.  dark  lines  where  the 
cruel  fingers  of  the  old  woman  had  clawed  into  his 
skin  as  he  was  slipping  away  from  her.  And  many  a 
squirrel  to  this  day  wears  those  same  dark  lines  on  his 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


105 


back  that  were  made  by  the  old  woman  on  the  squirrel 
that  was  once  a  little  boy. 

What's  that?  You  don't  believe  that  story?  Well, 
maybe  you  might  believe  it  if  you  were  an  Indian  girl 
and  your  gradma  had  told  you  it.  And  I  am  glad 
that  those  Indians  believe  that  story  enough  to  make 
them  afraid  to  kill  squirrels. 
The  Vancouver  Indians 
say  that  whoever  kills  a 
squirrel  will  have  bad  luck. 
I  wish  all  white  children 
had  as  much  sense  as  those 
Indians  have. 

Almost  as  strange  stories 

aS    this     are     told     by    SOme  STRIPED  SQUIRREL. 

nations  about  my  relatives,  the  Hares.  The  Hottentots 
say  that  the  moon  once  sent  the  hare  to  this  world  to 
tell  men  that  as  the  moon  died  away  and  rose  again, 
so  should  men  die  and  afterward  live  again.  But  the 
foolish  hare,  on  his  way  down  to  the  earth,  forgot 
what  he  was  to  say,  and  so  when  he  came  to  men  he 
cried  out  far  and  wide  over  the  earth  the  sad  news  that, 


106  THE   CLUB'S  P  AMP  PI  LET. 

though  the  moon  always  came  again  after  she  died, 
yet  men  should  die  body  and  soul.  Then  the  hare, 
having,  as  he  thought,  delivered  his  message  correctly, 
went  back  to  the  moon.  The  moon  asked  him  what 
he  had  said  to  men,  and  the  hare  repeated  his  message. 

But  the  moon  was  terribly  angry  to  think  that  the 
hare  should  have  told  such  an  untrue  thing  on  the 
earth,  and  she  picked  up  an  axe  in  her  anger  and  aimed 
a  blow  at  the  hare,*intending  to  kill  him.  But  the  axe 
merely  struck  the  lip  of  the  hare  and  cut  it  open,  and 
the  hare,  made  angry  by  the  pain,  flew  at  the  moon 
and  scratched  her  face  so  that  all  who  look  may  see 
on  the  moon  to  this  day  the  marks  of  those  scratches. 

But  I  think  myself  that  it  is  a  very  good  thing  that 
men  do  not  have  to  depend  on  animals  for  learning 
what  will  become  of  people  after  death. 


A    VOICE    FROM    A    HOLE    IN    THE    GROUND. 

Don't  look  down  here.     I  don't  want  any  one  com- 
ing to  look  down  my  little  hole  unless  it  is  an  insect 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


107 


I   AM  GOING    TO   BE   A 
GROUND-BEETLE. 


that  will  tumble  in  here  for  my  dinner.  I  am  going 
to  be  a  ground-beetle  some  day — one  of  the  kind  called 
Calosoma  —  and  I  must  eat  all  I  can.  so  as  to  grow. 
When  I  am  a  fine  ground-beetle  I  shall 
eat,  too.  My  folks  catch  June  bugs 
and  kill  them.  And  another  relative 
of  mine  does  good,  for  he  eats  potato- 
beetles.  Another  of  my  relatives,  that 
has  bright  green  wings,  will  go  up  trees 
to  catch  canker-worms,  and  another  kind  does  ever  so 
much  good  in  eating  those  dreadful  cut- 
worms that  plague  vegetable-raisers  so. 

You  cannot  see  how  I  look  while  I  am 
in  this  little  hole,  can  you  ?  Well,  I  am 
long  and  black,  and  have  thirteen  divisions 
to  me,  and  six  legs,  and  two  horny  hooks 
and  a  kind  of  false  leg  at  the  end  of  my 
body.  I  know  you  think  that  I  am  homely 
in  shape,  but  my  markings  are  pretty,  and 
I  shall  make  a  fine  beetle.  Some  of  the  perfect  beetles 
among  my  folks  are  real  pretty.  There  is  one  called 
Carabus  Adonis,  that  is  found  only  on  a  mountain  in 


CARABUS 
ADONIS. 


io8  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

Greece,  called   Mount  Olympus ;  and  that  beetle  is  a 
rich  violet  color,  with  golden  borders  to  his  wing-cases. 
I  have  some  cousins  in  Japan,  too.     Their  name  is 
Damaster,  but    the    Japanese   call    them 
the    "  Fiddle-Beetles,"    because   they  are 
something  the  shape  of  a  fiddle. 

But  my  relatives  have  been  found  in 
queerer  places  than  Japan.  Some  of  the 
smallest  of  us  "  Carabidae,"  as  people  call 
our  family,  have  been  found  under  great 
bowlders  that  were  hidden  many  feet  deep 
in  the  ground,  and  the  men  who  raised 
the  bowlders  had  to  take  crowbars  and 
use  a  great  deal  of  strength  to  get  the  stones  up.  How 
do  you  suppose  that  my  relatives  ever  came  under  such 
big  bowlders  ?  I  should  not  want  to  crawl  under  such 
places.  All  I  care  for  is  just  a  little  hole  in  the  sod. 
I  should  be  afraid  that  I  never  could  catch  an  ant  or 
any  other  insect,  if  I  lived  so  deep  in  the  ground 
as  that. 

Some  of  my  folks  are  brave  and  fire  guns.     I  sup- 
pose that   you   do  not  believe  that  a  beetle  could  do 


DAMASTER 
BLAPTOIDAS. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


109 


that,  but  I  do  not  mean  real  guns ;  only  a  kind  of 
beetle-gun  that  does  not  send  out  shot,  but  a  little  cloud 
of  smoke.  Some  of  my  English  relatives  do  that. 
These  beetles  live  under  stones,  and  when  an  insect  or 
a  person  tries  to  catch  one  of  these  "  Artillery-beetles," 
as  they  are  called,  puff !  goes  the  little  gun.  Some- 
times if  a  person  is  holding  one  of  these  beetles  in  his 
hand  when  the  gun  goes  off  he  can  hear  a  little  sound, 
but  the  English  beetles  cannot  fire  their  guns  with 
much  noise. 

There  are  some  other  "  Artil- 
lery Beetles,"  or  "  Bombardier 
Beetles,"  in  South  America,  that 
fire  quite  loudly,  their  sort  of 
beetle -cannons.  Sometimes  a 
South  American  beetle  will  fire 
his  cannon  several  times,  and  a 
person's  fingers  will  really  feel 
burning,  and  will  be  stained 
brown  whenever  the  smoke  from  the  beetle's  cannon  has 
touched  them.  That  is  a  fine  way  of  defending  one's 
self,  and  I  presume  that  if  I  had  a  gun  I  could  scare 


MORMOLYCE   PHYLLODKS. 


no  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

people  and  insects,  too.  But  I  shall  never  have  a  gun 
of  my  own.  But  I  hope  that  I  shall  be  able  to  run 
fast  enough  so  that  I  shall  not  need  a  gun.  Most  of 
my  folks  can  run  very  well. 

But  the  very  queerest  relatives  that  I  have  are  some 
living  in  the  Malayan  peninsula.  Those  beetles  are 
monsters  in  shape,  with  big  wings,  and  their  name  is 
Mormolyce  phyllodes.  They  cling  to  the  trunks  of 
trees  that  have  been  blown  down  by  storms.  One  may 
find  these  flat  beetles  on  the  under  side  of  the  trunks 
near  the  ground. 

I  have  some  poor  relatives  that  I  am  sure  you  will 
be  sorry  for.  They  live  in  Mammoth  Cave,  and  they 
have  no  eyes.  And  if  you  look  on  the  golden-rod  in 
August  or  September  you  may  find  some  bright-col- 
ored relatives  of  mine.  In  the  spring  there  are  num- 
bers of  us  under  stones.  Most  of  us  eat  animal  mat- 
ter, but  there  are  some  dark  relatives  of  ours  in  France 
and  Germany  that  I  am  sorry  to  say  do  harm  by  eat- 
ing grain.  They  are  found  in  wheat-fields.  But  some 
of  us  Carabidae  are  almost  everywhere.  There  are 
some  of  us  in  Arctic  countries  and  some  in  the  warm 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  in 

countries  of  the  earth,  and  others  are  found  up  to  the 
snow-line  on  mountains.  Others  live  on  sea-beaches 
and  catch  the  beach-fleas  and  eat  them.  And  in  warm 
countries  a  great  many  Carabidae  live  on  trees.  Many 
of  these  tree-beetles  are  quite  beautifully  colored  and 
marked.  There  are  a  good  many  red-spotted  kinds  of 
Carabidae  in  Africa,  and  in  Australia  I  have  some 
tremendous  relatives,  as  much 
as  two  inches  and  a  half  long. 

I  suppose  you  are  tired  of  my 
talk,  but  there  is  one  thing  that 
I  want  to  say  before  you  go.  Don't  you  mix  us  larvae 
up  with  the  larvae  of  the  "  Tiger  Beetles."  I'm  not  a 
tiger  beetle,  and  I  never  shall  be  one,  but  you  will  find 
the  larvae  of  tiger  beetles  in  holes  in  the  ground.  They 
are  very  homely,  for  they  have  heads  with  long  jaws, 
and  they  are  humpbacked.  They  often  make  their 
holes  in  sandy  banks  and  lie  there  in  wait  for  insects, 
just  as  I  do. 


LARVA  OF  A  GROUND-BEETLE. 


H2  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


WHY    CATS    WEAR    WHISKERS. 


Do   you   know   why   the    Pussies   were    whiskers,    my   dear  ? 

If  you  don't,    then   just   listen    a    while    and   you'll   hear 

A   most    wonderful    tale.       In   the    days    long    ago 

When    the    Pussies   could    talk  just    as    we    can,  you   know, 

And    the   fairies    still    lived,  there  were    sixteen    sweet   kits 

Named   respectively,  Spot,   Jumper,  Stripey  and    Spitz, 

Blacky,    Long-paws,    and    Scamper,  the    oldest   of   all. 

(The    nine    names   of   the   others    I   scarce    can    recall.) 

And  these   sixteen   fine   kitties   all   lived   with   their   ma 

In   the   depth   of   a   wood,    so   secluded   and   far 

From    most   other   live    creatures,    you'd   surely   have   thought 

They   might    all    have    behaved    themselves   just   as   they  ought, 

For   they'd    no   one    to   teach   them   the   least   naughty   thing. 

Least  of   all   could    these   kits   be   expected  to  bring 

On   the    cats    of   all   time    such   a    mark   of   disgrace 

As   the   whiskers   that   nowadays   dot   each   cat's   face. 

Now  the   sage    Mrs.    Sharp-eyes   (the    ma   had   this   name) 
Had   declared    that   she    thought   that   all    kits  were   to   blame 
Who   did    not   every   day   wash   their   faces   real   clean 
And   at   least   try   to   keep   their   paws   fit   to   be    seen. 
But   each   one   of  the    kittens,    most   sad   to   relate, 
Hated    nothing   so   much   as   to  wash   paws   and   pate. 

Now  it  chanced  Mrs.  Sharp-eyes,  one  day  in  the  wood, 
Heard  a  neighbor  was  sick,  and,  as  she  was  quite  good 
About  visiting  any  that  were  in  distress, 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


She    assembled    her   kittens,    gave    each    a    caress, 

And    then    said,    "  Now,  my  dears,  I    must   go   far   away 

To   relieve    a   loved   friend    who   is   aged   and   gray ; 

She    is   sick   and    uncared    for :    I  fear   she    may   die 

All    alone    in    the    forest    with    no   neighbor   nigh. 

As   a   present   I'll   take    a   delicious   field-mouse, 

And    I'll   leave   you,    my    children,    alone,  to   keep   house. 

And   so    now,  darling   kittens,  be    good  while    I'm   gone, 

I    will   surely  be    back    by  the    third    rising   morn." 

All   the    pussy-cats   waved   their   front   paws    in    adieu, 
And    the    youngest     kit,    Jumper, 

began   to   boo-hoo. 
But   they   all    soon    began    to   be 

merry  once    more, 
And   played    "  Puss-in-the-corner  " 

the    same    as   before, 
And  next  followed  "  Cat's-cradle/' 

and  then  they  all  sang 
Of    "The    cat     and    the     fiddle," 

until  the  woods  rang. 
Of  the   "  Puss  who  wore    Boots "    they  next   talked   quite   a 
Afterwards    they  recited    the   wonderful   rhyme 
That   relates   how  some   heedless,  unfortunate   kits 
One   sad   day  long   ago,    lost   their   nice   little   mitts. 

But   soon   Scamper  grew   tired   and   said,    "  Now,    see   here, 

Let   us   visit   the    fairies  while    ma   is   not   near. 

I    am   going,  for   one,  to   their    rock    right  away, 

To   find   out   what   they   have   for   their   dinner   to-day." 

But   the    kittens   at   this  all  drew  back    in    affright. 

"  No,    indeed  "    they  all    cried,  "  for   you   know   'tisn't   right. 


GOING  TO    HER    FRIEND'S. 


time. 


u4  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

> Mamma   always   has    told   us   we    never   must   steal, 
And   perhaps   you'd   get    caught;    then    just   think    how   you'd    feel." 

"  You're    afraid,"    Scamper   sneered,    and   she    scolded   and   teased 
Till   she    made    all   the   kittens   do   just   as   she   pleased, 

And   in   one    long  procession  the 

sixteen    kits   went 
To  the  fairies'  big  rock,  on  most 

sad   mischief   bent. 
Naughty   Scamper   peeped    round 
at  the   rock's  farther  side, 
Where  the  door  of  the  wee  dining- 

HELPINC.    HERSELF.  roQm     ^^    ^^ 

And    saw  there   a    long    table    all  covered  with  food  ; 

There    was   meat   and   fresh    milk    and    all    things   that   are   good. 

And  yet   none   of   the    fairies   were    anywhere    round. 

Hungry    Scamper   sprang   in  at   the    door   at   a   bound, 

And   the   other   kits   followed,  and   everything  ate 

Until    all   there  was   left  was   each   cat's   empty  plate. 

But   soon  they  heard   a  noise,  and    so   timid   were    they 

That   they   jumped   from    the   table    and   ran    fast  away. 

In   the   depths   of   the   wood,  underneath   the  pine-trees, 

They  all    finally,   stopped,    feeling   more  at   their  ease 

Since   they'd    traveled   so   far   from  the  ones  they  had  robbed, 

And,  besides,  they  were  sleepy;    their  heads   fairly  bobbed 

And    their   eyes   could   be    hardly  held   open.     "  Let's   rest 

In   this    place   for   a  while,"   Jumper   said,  "  I    detest 

Walking   round  when    I'm    sleepy."      The    rest    said   so,  too, 

And    sat   down.     "  I    suppose   what  we    all    ought   to   do," 

Blacky  said,    "is    to  wash  off   our   faces  and    paws.'' 

"  No,  indeed,"    the   rest  said,  "  we    sha'n't  mind  such  strict  laws." 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


So,    beneath  the    tall    pines    all    the    kitty-cats    slept, 
With    their   faces    so   dirty  their   ma  would    have  wept 
At   the  sight    if   she'd    seen    it ;    but   folks  who   don't    mind 
Shall    be    punished,  as    these    naughty  cats  were   to  find. 
Scamper   found    it    out   first  ;    she    awoke,  the    next   day, 
Feeling  queerly  and   stiff  round    her   mouth,  in    some  way. 
And   she    found,  upon    putting   her   paw   on    the    place, 
Some    pine-needles  were    stuck    in    the   grease    on    her   face. 

"  Did    I    ever ! "    she    said,  and,  upraising  her   paw, 

Gave    the    needles    a    brush,  but,  by  some    fairy  law, 

All   her   efforts   but   sent    the    stiff  things    farther   in, 

Till   at    last   they  just   seemed    to   be    part    of   her    skin. 

Scamper  sobbed  with   the    pain,  until,   roused   by  her   cries, 

All   the   rest   of   the   kitty-cats   opened   their  eyes, 

And   full   soon   they  all   found    their   mouths  fixed  just   the  same, 

Which    fact   covered    them    over  with    anger   and    shame. 


OBJKCTS    OK    SYMPATHY. 

And   the   tears,  big   and   salt,  pattered   dolefully  down, 
As   said  Jumper,  remembering   his   ma's   awful   frown, 
"  Oh !    what   do   you   suppose    Mamma   Sharp-eyes   will  say 
When   she   sees   us   all    looking   in    this   dreadful    way?" 

On  their  journey  toward   home    all  the    kits  wept   aloud, 
And  with  sobs   quite   heart-breaking,  they  solemnly  vowed 


n6 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


That   they   never  again   would  run    off   anywhere, 

When    their   mamma   had    strictly   said,    "  Do   not   go  there." 

Mamma    Sharp-eyes   had    finished    her   visit   so   kind 

And   was   coming   toward   home,  when    the    noises   combined 

Of   the  wailing   and    weeping   of  kits   struck   her   ear, 

And   the   sound   filled   her    heart   with   prophetical   fear. 

"  What   can    ail   those    poor   children  ?     They  must   be    in    need." 

And   she   ran   on    toward   home   at   the   top   of  her   speed. 


"NO,   I   CANNOT    RELIEVE   YOUR   BAD   CHILDREN,"   SAID  SHE. 

What   a   sight   met   her  eyes   as   she    opened   the   door ! 
And   her  ears   were   quite   stunned   by  the    dreadful   uproar. 
"  Why,    whatever   has   made    in   your  looks    such    a   change, 
And   how  comes   it   you   all    are   so   bristly  and   strange  ? " 
Mamma    Sharp-eyes   exclaimed.     "  Oh !    they  hurt,"  blubbered  Spitz. 
Scamper  howled  as  though  almost  scared  out  of  her  wits. 
"Just  let  me  pull  them  out,"  mamma  said;  but  "No,  no, 
It  will  only  hurt  worse,"  shrieked  the  kits  in  their  woe. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  117 

"Then    I'll  go  to  the  good  fairy  queen  right  away," 

Mamma  Sharp-eyes  announced,  "  and  see  what  she  will  say ; 

It  may  be  I  can  learn  how  to  loosen  these  things." 

Then  she  ran  toward  the  rock  as  if   she  had  had  wings. 

The  wee  queen  of   the  fairies  was  perched  on  a  flower, 

And  appealing  at  once  to  her  magical  power, 

Mamma  Sharp-eyes  described  how  the  pine-needles  clung, 

And  for  help  begged  with  all  of  her  eloquent  tongue. 

But  the  fairy-queen  shook  her  small  head  solemnly. 

"  No,  I  cannot  relieve  your  bad  children,"  said  she ; 

"  You  may  tell  them,  however,  if  they  will  be  good, 

And  will  each  wash  his  face  every  day,  as  cats  should, 

By  and  by  the  pine-needles  will  not  bristle  out, 

But  grow  soft  and  less  troublesome,  there  is  no  doubt." 

As  this  comfort  was  all  Mamma  Sharp-eyes  could  gain, 

She  went  back  to  her  children,  to  tell  them  with  pain 

Of  their  doom.     But  the  kittens  through  trouble  grew  wise, 

And,  from  being  the  laziest  kits  of  their  size, 

They  became  the  most  neat ;   washed  their  faces  and  paws, 

And  were  very  obedient  to  their  ma's  laws. 

But  the  dreadful  pine-needles  did  not  fall  away, 

And  all  those  cats'  descendants  wear  whiskers  to-day. 

This  Pamphlet  called  forth  the  following  letter: 

DEAR  LOOK-ABOUT  FOLKS  : 

Mis'  Surface  came  to  see  us  yesterday.  She's  always  coming  to  see 
mamma.  Bert  went  to  the  door,  and  I  knew  who'd  come,  'cause  I  heard  her 
talking.  I  didn't  want  to  see  Mis'  Surface  a  bit,  'cause  I  was  afraid  I'd  have 
to  sing.  Mis'  Surface  'most  always  makes  me  sing  "  I  want  to  be  an  angel," 
when  she  comes.  I  can  play  it  on  the  melodeon,  and  sing  it,  too.  My 


u8  THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 

mamma  taught  me  how,  but  I  hate  to  play  it  to  folks,  and  I  knew  I'd  have 

to  if  I  stayed,  and  so  I  ran  out  the  back  door  and  went  to  the  barn. 

Bert  and  I  have  a  real  nice  place  in  the  barn.     Nobody  knows  anything 

about  it,  'cepting  just  us.     It's  a  place  away  down  under  some  bales  of  hay. 

You  can't  see  it  at  all  from  anywhere  outside,  but  you  go  to  the  top  of  the 

pile  and  there's  a  hole  in  the  hay  just  big 
enough  for  me  to  get  in,  and  the  hole  goes 
sliding  away  down,  down,  down,  until  you  come 
to, a  kind  of  little  room  right  between  two 
bales,  where  there's  a  place  just  big  enough 
for  Bert  and  me  to  sit  together  and  look  out  a 
big  crack  in  the  boards.  'Most  every  day 

AMERICAN  MANT,S.  Aunt  'Cin*y  or  somebody  says,  «  I  don't  see 

how  you  children  do  get  your  faces  so  scratched 

up,"  but  Bert  and  I  never  tell.  Of  course  the  hay  scratches  when  we're  sliding 
down  that  hole,  but  I  don't  care  for  that,  and  neither  does  Bert.  It's  kind 
of  hard  work  getting  out  of  the  hole,  though,  sometimes. 

Well,  I  knew  Mis'  Surface  couldn't  find  me  in  that  hole,  so  I  went  and 
slid  down  there.  But  I  hadn't  been  there  but  a  few  minutes  when  I  heard 
papa  drive  into  the  barn,  and  in  a  minute  he  went  to  the  barn  door  and 
called,  "  Alice  !  "  And  so,  of  course,  I  had  to  climb  right  up  my  hole,  and 
papa  was  awfully  'stonished  when  he  saw  me  with  hay  in  my  hair,  and  he  told 
me  he  had  a  little  book  for  me,  and  so  he  pulled  out  that  Pamphlet  you  sent. 
And  I  sat  down  on  the  hay  and  read  it  till  Mis'  Surface  was  gone.  I  think 
it's  real  nice,  and  your  Ranatra's  real  queer. 

Papa  found  something  the  other  day  that  I  think  is  just  about  as  funny 
as  your  Ranatra.  Papa  was  walking  along  by  our  fence,  and  there,  in  the 
sun,  sat  just  the  queerest-looking  thing  !  Papa  put  his  handkerchief  over  it 
and  brought  it  to  the  house  and  showed  it  to  me.  He  said  it  was  a  Mantis, 
and  it's  sitting  on  the  kitchen  window  now. 

You  just  ought  to  see  it  catch  flies.  It  will  wait  till  it  sees  a  fly  sitting 
not  very  far  away,  and  then  it  will  begin  to  move  toward  the  fly.  The  mantis 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


119 


moves  so  slowly  that  you  can  hardly  see  it  move  at  all,  but,  just  as  it  reaches 
the  fly,  it  will  give  a  sudden  jump  and  catch  the  fly  with  those  two  queer  fore- 
legs, and  then  go  to  eating.  The  mantis  has  never  missed  any  fly  that  I've 
seen  yet.  Every  bit  of  a  fly  is  eaten  excepting  the  wings  and  legs.  If  the 
mantis  makes  a  mistake  and  gets  a  piece  of  a  wing  or  leg  into  its  mouth,  it 
always  pulls  the  piece  out  again. 

Papa  told  me  some  funny  things  about  the  mantis.  He  said  that  he  was 
reading  a  book  a  while  ago,  and  it  said  that  in  Java  there  is  a  kind  of  pink 
mantis  that,  when  it  sits  still,  looks  just  like  a  pink  orchis-flower.  And  papa 
said  that  this  mantis  likes  to  eat  butterflies,  and  he  thinks  that 
the  butterflies  suppose  that  the  mantis  is  really  a  flower,  and 
so  they  come  near  it  and  are  caught.  And  papa  showed  me 
something  in  a  book  that  I'll  copy  for  you.  He  said  it  was 
written  by  a  man  about  two  hundred  years  ago.  He  was 
writing  about  the  mantis,  and  he  said  :  "  This  little  creature 
is  considered  of  so  divine  a  nature  that  to  a  child  who  asks 
it  its  way,  it  points  it  out  by  stretching  out  one  of  its  legs, 
and  rarely  or  never  makes  a  mistake." 

Don't  you  think  that's  funny  ?  I  wonder  if  ever  any 
little  girl  was  really  lost  and  asked  a  mantis  to  please  show 
her  the  way  back  home  again.  And  papa  said  that  he  heard 
once  about  a  woman  who  kept  a  mantis  to  catch  mosquitoes 
so  they  wouldn't  bite  her,  but  he  don't  know  whether  that's 
a  true  story  or  not.  Anyway,  when  papa  lived  in  the  South, 
he  used  to  see  the  Carolina  mantis  and  find  its  eggs  on 
twigs  of  trees  sometimes.  He  drew  me  a  picture  of  the 
eggs  and  I'll  draw  it  over  for  you  and  send  it  in  this  letter. 
I  guess  you'll  think  they  are  funny-looking :  as  queer  as  the  insect  that  made 
them. 

Good-by  !  I'm  real  much  obliged  for  the  book  you  sent  me. 

ALICE. 


EGGS   OF   MANTIS 
CAROLINA. 


120 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


"  Those  are  queer-looking  eggs  —  very,"  remarked 
Blanche,  as  she  looked  at  the  picture  that  came  in 
Alice's  letter.  "Isn't  it  strange;  we  know  just  about 

what  shape 
any  kind  of 
a  bird's  egg 
will  be,  but 
insect-e  g  g  s 
seem  to  be 
a  1 1  sorts  of 
shapes." 

"Yes,"  said 
Aunt  Nan, 
"some  in- 
sect-eggs are 

so  beautiful  that  the  late  English  naturalist,  Mr. 
Wood,  says  that  he  thinks  they  would  be  exquisite 
models  for  jugs  and  vases.  And  he  says  that  once  he 
was  lecturing  on  the  transformations  of  insects  and  he 
showed  a  drawing  of  an  insect's  egg,  and,  after  the 
lecture,  a  porcelain  manufacturer  who  happened  to  be 
in  the  audience  came  to  him  and  begged  a  copy  of  the 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  121 

drawing.  Mr.  Wood  gave  it  to  him,  and  he  went 
home  and  made  a  number  of  jars  in  exact  imitation  of 
the  egg." 

"  I  found  a  picture  of  some  queer  eggs  the  other 
day,"  said  Al.  "They  were  those  of  the  Harlequin 
Cabbage-bug,  or  "  Calico  back,"  as  some  people  call  it, 
and  the  eggs  look  just  like  little  white  barrels  with 
black  hoops  around  them,  and  each  barrel  has  a  little 
black  spot  in  just  the  right  place  for  the  bung-hole  of 
the  barrel." 

"  And,  when  they  hatch,  do  the  larvae  come  out  of 
bung-holes  ?  "  asked  Aunt  Nan. 

"  No,"  said  Al,  "  the  larvae  cut  out  the  heads  of  the 
barrels  and  come  out  that  way  ;  and  the  book  I  read  it 
in  said  that  the  heads  of  the 
barrels  are  cut  out  with  the 
utmost  neatness  .and  pre- 


JB 

BARREL-EGGS  OF  THE    HARLEQUIN 

"  But     What     do      the     larvae  CABBAGE-BUG. 

cut  out  the  heads  of  the  barrels  with  ?  "  asked  Kittie. 

"With   their  beaks,"   said   Al.     "If   the  weather  is 

favorable,  the  barrels  stay  whole  only  three  days,  for 


122 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET. 


the    larvae  will   hatch    and    cut    their  way  out  by  that 
time." 

Aunt  Nan  had  found  Wood's  "  Common  Objects  of 

the  Microscope,"  and  was  turning 
over  the  leaves. 

"  There  ! "  said  she,  "  that  is  what 
I  was  looking  for,"  and  she  held 
up  a  picture.  "  Here  is  the  ribbed 
egg  of  the  common  Tortoise-shell 
butterfly,  and  this  cornucopia  is  the 
egg  of  the  gad-fly  as  it  appears  when 
fastened  to  the  hair  of  a  horse ; 
and  this  egg  that  has  such  a  cun- 
ning little  lid,  is  that  of  the  much-abhorred  bed-bug." 

"Wouldn't  it  be  nice 
to  have  a  collection  of 
different  kinds  of  insect- 


eggs 


?"  said   Kittie.     "I 


CHRYSOPA  OCULATA  AND  EGGS. 


believe  I'll  start  one." 

"  I'm  afraid  you  will  have  all  your  trouble  for  noth- 
ing," said  Aunt  Nan,  in  rather  a  discouraging  tone. 

"Why?"  asked  Kittie. 


THE   CLUB'S  PAMPHLET.  123 

"  Because  insect-eggs  will  not  keep  their  shape. 
Even  if  they  do  not  hatch,  they  are  almost  sure  to 
collapse  after  a  while  and  lose  their  beautiful  forms. 
A  collection  would  be  very  fine  if  it  were  not  for  that ; 
for  there  are  so  many  different  shapes  that  if  a  good 
entomologist  sees  an  egg  he  can  be  pretty  sure  of  guess- 
ing correctly  the  very  insect  that  laid  it.  Sometimes 

« 

insect-eggs  have  stalks  to  them  and  stand  up  as  though 
they  were  growing.  The  Lace-winged  Fly,  Chrysopa, 
which  is  its  scientific  name,  has  such  eggs.  Chrysopa 
is  a  very  useful  creature,  for  her  larvae  kill  the  plant-lice 
that  do  so  much  harm.  On  account  of  this  the  larvae 
are  called  "  Aphis-lions."  The  eggs  are  often  placed 
near  a  group  of  the  aphides,  and  so  the  larvae  find  their 
dinner  all  ready  as  soon  as  they  are  hatched.  In 
Europe,  the  gardeners  hunt  for  the  Aphis-lions,  and 
put  them  on  fruit-trees,  and  the  larvae  soon  rid  the 
fruit-trees  of  the  pests  that  injure  them.  Chrysopa  her- 
self has  delicate  wings  and  is  often  green,  with  yellow 
eyes." 


CHAPTER   V. 

ON   THE    SEA-rBEACH. 

ONE  day  in  June,  Alice  took  a  journey  to  a  town 
called  Monterey.  Alice's  father  and  mother  and  Uncle 
Frank  were  all  Chautauquans,  and  they  were  going  to 
attend  the  summer  meeting  of  that  society  which,  in 
California,  is  always  held  near  the  old  Spanish  town 
of  Monterey.  Alice  took  her  note-book  with  her,  and 
determined  that  she  would  jot  down  all  the  new  things 
she  might  find  out  in  natural  history,  for  she  very 
much  wished  to  write  to  the  Eastern  members  of  the 
Look-About  Club  an  account  of  her  visit.  She  wished 
all  the  more  to  do  this  because  the  brook,  where  she 
had  been  dredging  during  the  spring  months,  had  now 
shown  decided  signs  of  becoming  dry,  and  she  knew 
she  should  not  be  able  to  find  many  more  fresh-water 
insects. 

The  long  ride  south  on  the  train  came  to  an  end  at 

124 


ON  THE   SEA-BEACH. 


125 


last,  and  they  all  climbed  into  omnibuses  and  were 
driven  away  through  the  winding  streets  of  the  old 
town  toward  the  woods,  for  the  Chautauqua  Assembly 
meets  farther  on,  in  a  place  called  Pacific  Grove.  On 
the  way  Alice  sat  and 
looked  at  the  beautiful  blue 
bay,  stretching  in  a  wide 
h  a  1  f  -  m  o  o  n  ,  and  caught 
glimpses  of  the  whitest 
sand-beaches  that  she  had 
ever  seen.  At  one  point 
were  a  few  huts  which  rep- 
resented a  little  whaling- 


station  where  whales  were 
brought  ashore  in  the  win- 
ter-time. 

"  May  we  go  there  some 
day,  Uncle?"  asked  Alice,  charmed  with  the  prospect. 

"  If  you  go  there  once  you  won't  want  to  go  again," 
said  Uncle  Frank. 

"  Why  ?  "  asked  Alice. 

"  Your  nose  will  tell  you  why,  if  you   ever  go  near 


A    VIEW    IN    PACIFIC    GROVE. 


126  ON  THE   SEA-BEACH. 

there,"  said   her  uncle ;  but  Alice  looked   back  at  the 
blackened    whaling-station  as    if   she    intended   going, 

anyway. 

But  the  whaling-station  passed  out  of  sight,  and  a 
Chinese  fishing-village,  with  huts  and  blue-bloused  peo- 
ple, came  in  view ;  and  then  the  woods  closed  in,  and 
before  Alice  had  time  to  observe  many  more  things, 
she  found  the  coach  stopping,  and  she  and  her  folks 
were  at  Pacific  Grove.  There  were  hosts  of  white 
tents  and  little  cottages  scattered  among  the  pines,  and 
soon  Alice's  folks  had  chosen  a  little  house  of  four 
rooms,  that  seemed  to  Alice  much  like  a  play-house. 

She  went  around  looking  at  the  furniture,  until  she 
came  to  the  kitchen,  and  there  she  stopped  short,  gaz- 
ing at  one  thing ;  it  was  a  match-safe ;  at  least  matches 
were  in  it,  but  Alice  was  sure  she  had  never  seen  such 
a  match-safe  before. 

"  What  is  that  ?  "  asked  she  of  the  woman  who  had 
rented  the  house  to  them. 

"  Why,  it's  a  barnacle,"  answered  the  woman. 

"But — why,  it's  dreadfully  big,"  said  Alice.  "I 
never  saw  any  like  that.  All  the  barnacles  that  I  ever 


ON  THE   SEA-BEACH,  127 

saw  were  little  bits  of  things.  I've  found  them  on 
rocks." 

"  I  found  that  on  a  rock,  too,"  said  the  woman,  smil- 
ing ;  "  and  I  have  some  more  big  barnacles  over  in  my 
shell-store.  You  must  come  over  and  see  them.  I 
have  whale-barnacles,  too;  some  I  picked  off  of  whales 
myself,  down  at  the  whaling-station,  last  winter." 

"  Whale-barnacles  ?  "  asked  Alice.    "  What  are  they  ?  " 

"Why,  they're  a  different  kind  of  barnacle,  that  sticks 
on  whales,"  said  the  woman,  whose  name  was  Mrs. 
Evans.  "  They  bother  the  whales  dreadfully,  too." 

"  How  big  are  the  whale-barnacles  ?  "  asked  Alice. 

"  Nearly  as  big  as  this  rock-barnacle ;  not  quite," 
said  Mrs.  Evans. 

And  Alice  rushed  off  after  a  tape-measure,  and  came 
back  to  get  the  dimensions  of  the  big  match-safe. 
First  she  measured  the  distance  around  it  on  the 
outside,  and  she  found  that  in  the  largest  part  it  was 
just  twelve  inches.  It  was  a  little  more  than  four 
inches  high,  and,  in  the  widest  part  underneath,  it  was 
three  and  a  half  inches.  On  the  top  of  this  queer  match- 
safe  was  a  cap  of  sea-moss  and  bits  of  white  coral. 


128 


ON  THE   SEA-BEACH. 


Pretty  soon  Alice  opened  the  back  door  and  walked 
out  on  the  little  stoop.  Half  a  dozen  blue  jays  were 
darting  about  in  the  pines  overhead,  scolding  as  loudly 

as  they  could.  Alice  was  look- 
ing at  them,  wondering  what 
the  quarrel  was  about,  when 
she  heard  some  one  say, 
"Halloo!" 

Alice  looked  all  around,  but 
saw  no  one. 

"  Halloo  !  "  said  the  voice 
again,  and  a  yellow  head 
peeped  over  the  lath-fence  that  separated  Alice's  yard 
from  the  next  one. 

"  Who  are  you  ?  "  asked  Alice. 

"  I'm  Wobbie,"  said  the  yellow  head,  as  he  began  to 
climb  the    fence.     "  Say,   don't    you    like    our    house  ? 
Tisn't  very  big.     At  home  we  have  a  bigger  house. 
It  has  upstairs,  downstairs,  and  bastings." 
"  And  what  ?  "  said  Alice. 

"  Bastings,"  responded   Robbie.     "  Don't    you   know 
-  where  you  go  downstairs  in  the  dark  ?  " 


I'M  WOUBIE!  " 


ON   THE   SEA-BEACH. 


129 


"  Basement,  I  guess  you  mean,"  said  Alice ;  but  Rob- 
bie was  not  to  be  corrected. 

Just  then,  "  How  do  ?  "  came  from  the  other  side  of 
the  house,  and  Alice  looked  up  to  see  a  Chinaman  with 
two  baskets. 

"  Buy  shell  ?  "  continued  he.     And  he  held  up  a  little 
string  of  seven  small  sea-urchins,  one 
above  another.     Their  prickles  had  been 
taken  off,  and  the  purplish-brown  shells 
remained. 

Alice  called  her  mother,  and  the 
Vhole  family  came  to  investigate  Ah 
Wo's  baskets.  He  had  huge  abalone- 
shells  in  plenty ;  "  Ear-shells,"  as  they 
are  sometimes  called ;  Haliotis,  as  is 
their  scientific  name.  They  glittered 
inside  with  beautiful  shades  of  green 
and  silver  and  red,  and  many  of  the 
abalones  had  fronds  of  sea-weed  hang- 
ing from  the  outside  of  the  shells.  In 
one  basket  was  the  big  white  lump  of  meat  that  consti- 
tutes the  abalone  itself  and  that  is  eaten  by  Chinamen. 


SEA-URCHINS. 


CHITON   SPINOSUS. 


130  ON   THE   SEA-BEACH. 

Hanging  on  with  one  hand  to  his  father's  blouse 
was  a  little  Chinese  boy,  wearing  a  pink  calico  apron. 
This  apron  had  a  big  pocket,  not  on  the  side,  as  in 
American  aprons,  but  under  his  cl^in,  covering  his  little 
chest.  This  pocket  was  stuffed  with 
some  sort  of  contents,  and  he  peeped 
around  from  behind  his  father,  and, 
drawing  something  out  of  his  pocket, 
held  it  toward  Alice.  It  was  a  very 
little  abalone,  not  more  than  an  inch  across. 

Alice  took  it  and  gave  the  little  fellow  five  cents, 
which  he  received  with  great  satisfaction. 

"  What  is  your  name  ?  "  asked  Alice,  but  the  little 
Chinaman  refused  to  answer,  and  hid  himself  behind 
his  father,  satisfied  that  his  part  of  the  transaction  was 
done. 

"  He  name  Yat,"  said  his  father,  as  he  raised  the 
two  baskets  by  a  pole  and  slung  them  over  his  right 
shoulder. 

"  Good-by,  Yat.  Come  and  see  me  again,"  called 
Alice,  but  Yat  rushed  away,  his  little  pig-tail  streaming 
in  the  wind. 


ON  THE   SEA-BEACH. 


One  day  Alice  bethought  herself  of  her  promise  to 
go  and  see  Mrs.  Evans'  shell-shop.  She  found  that 
lady  in,  showing  her  shells  to  a  customer. 

"  Those  are  sea-cradles,"  said  she,  in  answer  to  a 
question  from  the  customer ;  "  some  folks  call  them 
Chitons." 

The  shells  did  look  something  like  little  cradles, 
green  inside. 

"  They're  made  up  of  parts,  you  see,"  said  Mrs. 
Evans,  "  and  in  one  kind  of  chiton,  the  parts  are  shaped 
like  butterflies.  See,"  and  she  held  up  a  number  of 
pieces  of  a  chiton-shell.  They  were  almost  like  a  but- 
terfly in  shape,  and  Alice 
asked  her  why  she  had 
taken  a  chiton  to  pieces 
that  way. 

"I    didn't    take   one   to 
pieces,"  said    Mrs.   Evans. 
"  I  found  these  '  Butterfly- 
shells  '  on  the  rocks.     Folks  like  to  buy  them,  and  they 
paint  butterflies  on  them." 

But  it  was  not  till  Alice    had    returned   home  and 


CHITON   MAGNIFICUS. 
(Enlarged. ) 


MASTICATING    APPARATUS    OF 
SEA-URCHIN. 


132  ON  THE   SEA-BEACH. 

hunted  up  a  picture  and  a  description  of  a  chiton  that 
she  really  knew  what  a  live  creature  of  that  kind  is ; 
that  it  is  related  to  the  limpets,  has  eight  pieces  to  its 
shell,  and  can  roll  itself  up  into  a  ball,  which  is  a  very 

queer  thing  for  any  creature  having 
a  shell  to  do.  And  she  found  out, 
too,  that  the  word  Chiton  comes 
from  a  Greek  word  meaning  "  a 
shield ; "  and  the  creature  has  this 
name  because  the  shape  of  its  shell 
is  like  a  shield.  And  many  of  these  chitons,  when  they 
are  alive,  have  spines.  Those  chitons  in  the  Northern 
seas  are  small,  but  those  around  the  equator  are  quite 
large,  comparatively.  Chitons  have  no  eyes,  and  the 
one  from  which  the  so-called  "  Butterfly-shells  "  comes 
is  the  Giant  Chiton  :  Cryptochiton  Stelleri. 

Once  in  a  while  the  body  of  this  large  chiton  is 
found ;  but  more  often  separate  valves  of  its  shell  are 
washed  ashore,  and  are  found  and  called  Butterfly- 
shells.  These  white  butterflies  are  not  seen  when  one 
looks  at  an  entire  chiton,  because  they  are  wholly  cov- 
ered by  a  reddish-brown  mantle. 


ON  THE   SEA-BEACH. 


133 


Then  Mrs.  Evans  showed  Alice  the  whale-barnacles, 
as  she  had  promised.  They  were  not  so  large  as  the 
rock-barnacle  in  Alice's  kitchen,  but  they  were  large 
enough  to  have  been  great  torments  to  the  poor  whale 
on  which  they  resided. 

On  the  shelves  were  numbers  of  big  white  key-hole 
limpets  with  the  hole  in  the  middle  of  them,  waiting 
for  that  key  that  never  comes.  But  some  of  the  most 
delicate  shells  that  Alice  took  a  fancy  to  were  brought, 
so  the  woman  said,  from  the  kelp  outside  the  rocks, 
beyond  the  low-water  mark. 

"Folks  call  them  Top-Shells,"  said  Mrs.  Evans; 
"and  the  reason  they  live  outside 
the  rocks  is  that,  if  they  didn't, 
they'd  be  smashed  to  pieces  in 
the  storms.  They  have  to  live 
where  there's  nothing  hard  to 
hit  against,  and  the  kelp  makes 
a  mighty  good  home  for  them. 
But  then,  so  far  as  I've  noticed,  the  Lord  always  fixes 
things  so  that  the  humbler  critters  are  comfortable. 
It's  only  us  human  folks  that's  invented  grumbling." 


ECHINUS   MAMII.LATUS. 
(Natural  size.) 


134 


ON  THE   SEA-BEACH. 


After  looking  at  Mrs.  Evans's  beautiful  abalones,  and 

her  books  of  sea-weed — each  leaf  of  the  books  being 

just  the  right  shape  to  fit  the  covers  of  small  abalones 

-and  after  seeing  her  collection  of  abalone  jewelry, 

Alice  decided  to  go  exploring. 

"  I'm  going   to   hunt   for  something   alive,  myself," 

said  she,  and  she  started  for  the 
beach. 

Uncle  Frank  met  her  on  the 
way. 

"  See  what  I've  found,"  said 
he,  and  he  held  up  a  dish  of  sea- 
water  in  which  was  a  spiny 
round  thing,  alive. 

"  What  is  it  ?  "  asked  Alice. 


GROOVED  TOP-SHELL    FOUND 
NEAR   MONTEREY. 


"  It's  a  little  live  sea-urchin,"  said  Uncle  Frank,  and 
Alice  looked  in.  It  was  of  a  purplish  color. 

"  What  makes  folks  call  them  '  urchins  '  ?  "  asked 
Alice,  as  she  poked  her  finger  at  the  captive. 

"  That  is  an  old  word  that  came  from  the  French 
Oursin"  said  her  uncle ;  "  and  it  means  a  '  hedgehog,' 
on  account  of  the  spines,  you  see." 


ON   THE   SEA-BEACH.  135 

"  Oh ! "  said  Alice,  "  I  thought  urchin  meant  a  little 
boy;  and  I. didn't  see  why  folks  should  call  that  thing 
that." 

"  Now  that  you  have  seen  him,  I  think  we  will  take 
him  back  to  the  rocks,"  said  Uncle  Frank ;  and  they 
walked  toward  the  beach. 

"  Did  that  urchin  hurt  you  any  when  you  caught 
it  ?  "  asked  Alice. 

"No,"  said  her  uncle;  "but  I  read,  the  other  day, 
about  a  man  who  found  a  kind  of  sea-urchin  that  hurts. 
He  was  visiting  the  Philippine  Islands,  and  he  dredged 
up  a  lot  of  these  sea-urchins  from  the  shallow  water 
near  the  coast.  These  urchins  have  hollow,  pointed 
spines,  and  the  man,  Mr.  Moseley,  said  that  he  thought 
that  there  must  be  a  kind  of  poison  in  the  ends  of  the 
spines ;  for  the  minute  one  of  them  runs  into  a  person's 
skin,  the  person  feels  a  sharp,  stinging  pain,  like  a 
wasp's  sting,  only  not  quite  so  sharp,  and  the  pain  lasts 
about  five  minutes." 

"  Uncle,"  said  Alice,  "  what  do  sea-urchins  live  on  ?  " 

"  Sea-weeds  and  dead  fish,"  said  Uncle  Frank. 
"  They  are  scavengers." 


136  ON  THE   SEA-BEACH. 

They  had  reached  the  sea-beach  by  this  time,  and, 
bending  down,  Uncle  Frank  put  the  little  sea-urchin 
back  into  the  salt-water  again. 

Alice  was  looking  down  into  a  pool  left  by  the 
tide. 

"  What's  that  thing  walking  along  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  Where  ?  "  said  her  uncle. 

"  There,"  said  Alice,  pointing  down. 

"  Oh !  that's  a  hermit-crab,"  said  Uncle  Frank. 

"  A  crab  ?  "  said  Alice.  "  Why,  he  looks  like  a  big 
snail  with  queer  legs." 

"  That's  because  he  has  stolen  some  mollusk's  shell 
and  eaten  up  the  mollusk  and  put  himself  inside  of  hist 
house." 

"  Is  he  as  wicked  as  that?  "  asked  Alice. 

"  Yes,  indeed,"  said  her  uncle.  "  He  is  a  regular 
murderer  and  thief.  That  same  man  I  told  you  about, 
Mr.  Moseley,  when  at  the  Admiralty  Islands,  was  one 
day  out  collecting  plants,  when  he  saw  what  he  thought 
was  a  fine,  large  land-snail  on  top  of  a  bush  about  four 
feet  high.  Mr.  Moseley  tried  to  take  the  snail  in  his 
hand,  but  he  received  quite  a  severe  bite,  instead ;  for 


ON  THE   SEA-BEACH.  137 

a  big  hermit-crab  was  inside  of  the  shell,  which  was 
not  a  land,  but  a  water  one." 

"  Seems  to  me  Mr.  Moseley  had  a  pretty  hard  time 
with  the  stinging  urchins  and  biting  crabs,"  said  Alice. 
"  I  guess  this  crab  doesn't  like  to  have  you  talk  so. 
He's  going  to  hide  himself  in  that  hole." 

"  Most  wicked  people    don't   like  to  have  their  evil 
deeds    talked    about,"    said 
her  uncle. 

"  What  are  those  China- 
men doing  ?  "  asked  Alice. 

The    tWO  Walked    OVer    tO  "EAR-SHKLL." 

the  Chinamen  lying  on  the  (Very  much  reduced-} 

beach,  and  found  them  busily  engaged  in  picking  up 
handfuls  of  sand  and  looking  at  it. 

"  What  are  you  trying  to  find  ?  "  asked  Alice. 

One  of  the  Chinamen  looked  up,  and  Alice  saw  that 
he  was  Ah  Wo. 

"  Me  find  licee-shell,"  he  said ;  and  he  drew  a  little 
paper  out  of  his  blouse  and  handed  it  to  Alice.  It 
contained  perhaps  fifty  little  "  rice-shells,"  as  they  are 
called,  looking  exactly  like  pure  white  grains  of  rice. 


1 38  ON  THE   SEA-BEACH. 

The  scientific  name  of  this  shell  is  Marginella  Jewettii. 
The  Chinamen  were  laboriously  sifting  the  sand  and 
bits  of  broken  shells  through  their  fingers  in  search  of 
this  addition  to  their  stock  of  trade. 

"How  much  are  the  rice-shells?"  asked  Uncle  Frank. 

"  Fi'  cents,  twenty,"  said  Ah  Wo. 

"  Don't  little  Yat  help  find  them  ?  "  asked  Alice. 

"  Some  day,"  said  Ah  Wo ;  "  some  day  when  he  big." 

''That's  cheap  enough,  I'm  sure,"  said  Uncle  Frank, 
as  they  walked  on.  "  I  shouldn't  want  to  lie  there  in 
the  hot  sun  and  sift  sand  through  my  fingers  for  hours 
till  I  had  found  twenty  rice-shells,  and  then  sell  them 
for  only  '  fi'  cents.' ' 


CHAPTER   VI. 

ALICE'S  DOINGS. 

X 

ONE  day  Alice  went  down  to  the  beach  for  a  ramble 
by  herself.  Her  father  and  mother  had  gone  with 
Uncle  Frank  to  a  Chautauqua  lecture,  Robbie  was 
taking  his  afternoon  nap,  and  there  seemed  to  be  no 
one  she  knew  to  play  with ;  so  Alice  decided  to  go 
down  and  explore  the  beach.  On  the  sand,  barefoot 
children  were  wading  into  the  surf  and  rushing  out 
again  with  little  shrieks  at  the  waves.  Farther  out 
empty  row-boats  and  sloops  tossed  at  their  moorings. 
The  gray  and  brown  cliffs  were  adorned  here  and  there 
with  flashing  clumps  of  red  "  painted-cups,"  mixed 
with  the  yellow  of  stout-growing  plants  that  overtopped 
the  lavender  of  great  bunches  of  the  large-flowering 
cliff-daisies.  Wild  oats  waved  upon  the  precipices. 
Walking  under  the  pines  and  live-oaks,  she  could  see 
streamers  of  gray  moss  that  hung  from  the  boughs. 

139 


140 


ALICE'S  DOINGS 


After  strolling  quite  a  while  on  the  bluffs,  Alice 
found  herself  near  the  Chinese  fishing-village,  and 
there,  sitting  before  the  huts,  were  three  artists ;  one 
girl  and  two  men.  They  were  drawing  the  huts  and 
the  high  frames  for  drying  fish,  and  the  Chinamen 
were  greatly  interested  in  the  performance.  They 
crowded  around  the  artists,  and  looked  over  their 
shoulders,  and  jabbered  queer  talk 
about  the  pictures,  though  whether  the 
talk  was  complimentary  or  not,  Alice 
could  not  decide. 

One  little  Chinese  girl  in  the  group 
had  a  bowl  out  of  which  she  ate  with 
chopsticks,  and  at  a  distance  were 
Chinamen  winnowing  small  dried  fish.  One  China- 
man would  lift  up  the  fish  and  let  them  drop  by  the 
handful,  and  the  wind  would  blow  out  the  straw  or 
grass  that  had  become  mixed  with  the  fish  while  they 
were  drying.  Then  the  Chinaman  took  the  winnowed 
fish  and  spread  them  on  matting  to  dry  more.  There 
were  crates  of  small  fish  that  were  standing  on  their 
heads,  and  drying-tables  full  of  other  kinds  of  fish. 


ONE   OF  THE   ARTISTS. 


ALICES  DOINGS.  141 

All  over  the  rocks  near  the  artists  were  small  fish,  put 
there  to  dry. 

Presently  Alice  saw  three  Chinese  women  push  off 
a  boat  and  row  away  in  it.  As  nearly  as  Alice  could 
find  out,  they  were  going  for  kelp. 

The  sun  was  warm  and  Alice  was  tired  when  she 
left  the  Chinese  hamlet,  so  she  walked  slowly  back, 

• 

stopping  at  this  beach  and  that  one  to  look  for  shells. 
She  found  numbers  of  pretty  small  ones,  and  two  rice- 
shells.  At  last  she  came  to  a  beach  where  there  was 
an  empty  row-boat  drawn  high  up  on  the  sands.  Some 
one  had  taken  the  oars  and  left  the  boat. 

"  I  guess  it  belongs  to  some  fisherman,"  said  Alice, 
as  she  walked  over  the  white  sand  to  the  boat.  "  Yes ; 
and  there's  a  little  fish  now.  It's  a  little  shiner,"  and, 
climbing  in,  Alice  picked  up  the  fish,  and,  finding  a  tin 
cup  under  a  seat,  she  dipped  up  some  sea-water  and 
put  the  fish  in  it,  hoping  he  would  come  to  life.  But 
the  little  fish  was  too  far  gone  for  that,  and  though 
Alice  found  several  more  "  shiners  "  in  the  boat,  yet 
she  could  not  bring  any  of  them  to  life. 

And     then,    someway,    Alice     must    have    gone    to 


142  ALICE'S  DOINGS. 

sleep  in  the  hot  sunshine,  for  the  next  thing  she  knew, 
the  sun  was  gone,  little  stars  were  just  beginning  to 
peep  out,  and  she  was  in  a  row-boat,  far  out  in  the 
tossing  waves,  with  the  land  just  a  mere  strip  fading 
faintly  away  in  the  darkness. 

"  Why,"  said  Alice,  starting  up  and  looking  around, 

"  how  did  I  come  here  ?  " 

» 
The  waves  only  splashed  in  answer,  and  gradually 

the  events  of  the  afternoon  came  back  to  her. 

"  I  must  have  gone  to  sleep,"  said  she  to  herself, 
"  and  I  don't  believe  that  I  even  looked  to  see  whether 
the  boat  was  fastened  or  not.  It  was  so  far  up  on  the 
beach  that  I  never  thought  the  waves  could  reach  it. 
But  how  am  I  going  to  get  home  without  any  oars  ?  " 

She  looked  around,  trying  to  see  some  boat,  but 
there  was  none  in  sight.  The  fog  was  rolling  in,  hid- 
ing all  the  land  and  wetting  Alice's  hair.  She  drew 
her  little  cape  closer  around  her,  and  sat  shivering. 

"  I  suppose  I  could  cry,"  said  she  to  herself,  as  she 
sat  tossing  there,  thinking.  "  I  guess  it  would  be 
pretty  easy,  but  I  think  I'll  scream  first.  Maybe  some 
one  will  hear  me." 


ALICE'S  DOINGS.  143 

And  scream  she  did,  calling  for  help  with  all  her 
might.  Once  she  thought  she  heard  an  answer,  but  it 
was  only  a  sea-bird.  And  as  an  hour  passed  and  it 
grew  darker  and  darker,  and  the  fog  rolled  in  more 
heavily,  and  the  lights  ashore  were  hidden  and  the  stars 
blanketed  from  sight,  Alice  did,  indeed,  find  it  easier 
and  easier  to  think  of  crying. 

"I'm  not  going  to,  not  a  bit,"  said  she  to  herself, 
bravely,  as  she  crouched  down  in  the  bottom  of  the 
boat  and  held  to  the  seat,  a  very  drenched,  forlorn  child 
indeed.  "  I  s'pose  I'll  catch  an  awful  cold,  but  my 
papa'll  cure  me.  But  I'm  getting  dizzy;"  and  then 
Alice  looked  pretty  sober.  Suppose  she  should  be- 
come so  dizzy  with  that  perpetual  tossing  that  she 
should  not  be  able  to  hold  herself  into  the  boat  and 
should  be  thrown  out?  And,  in  spite  of  herself,  she 
cried  a  little  at  that. 

Maybe  it  was  the  sound  of  the  water  that  made  her 
think  of  it,  but  someway  there  came  drifting  through 
her  mind  the  remnant  of  an  old  chant  that  she  had 
heard  somewhere : 

"  The  floods  have  lifted  up  their  voice.     The  Lord 


144  ALICE'S  DOINGS. 

on  high  is  mightier  than  the  noise  of  many  waters, 
than  the  mighty  waves  of  the  sea,"  and  with  that 
thought  she  stopped  crying. 

"  Then  I  won't  be  afraid  any  more,"  said  she  to  her- 
self, and  the  fog  and  darkness  and  surge  of  the  water 
did  not  seem  so  terrible  any  more  when  she  thought  of 
the  One  who  could  see  even  herself  as  she  floated  alone. 

A  little  while  after  this  there  came  a  queer  sound 
over  the  water.  Alice  wondered  if  she  could  hear  dis- 
,tinctly.  It  sounded  like  something  that  she  had  heard 
in  the  Chinese  fishing-village. 

"  I'm  not  there  now,"  said  she  to  herself,  "and  I 
needn't  imagine  so." 

But  still  once  in  a  while  Alice  thought  she  heard 
that  sound.  Pretty  soon  she  was  sure  of  it.  It  was 
that  queerest  of  music  —  Chinese  singing.  It  came 
nearer. 

"  I'm  going  to  scream  and  see  if  that's  really  any- 
body, or  whether  I  only  imagine  it,"  said  Alice,  and 
she  called  as  loudly  as  possible. 

There  was  no  answer,  but  the  queer  singing  went 
on,  and  Alice  heard  oars. 


ALICE'S  DOINGS.  145 

"  Here  !     Come  this  way,"  cried  she. 

The  singing  had  just  come  to  an  end,  and  probably 
the  rowers  heard,  for  there  came  through  the  fog  a 
voice  that  said,  "  H6-lah !  " 

"  Help  me  !  "  cried  Alice. 

The  sound  of  oars  came  nearer  till  the  boat  was 
almost  alongside  of  Alice's,  and  she  could  just  make 
out  that  it  contained  three  Chinese  women. 

"  I  guess  it's  the  three  I  saw  pushing  off  for  kelp 
this  afternoon,"  said  she. 

"I  no  row --no  oars --you  take  me  home,"  ex- 
plained Alice. 

But  the  Chinese  women  did  not  seem  to  understand. 
They  could  not  talk  much  English,  for  it  is  usually 
the  Chinese  men  who  have  to  do  the  bargaining  with 
Americans. 

"  I  go  with  you.  Take  me  home,"  said  Alice,  point- 
ing toward  where  she  thought  the  shore  should  be, 
and  then,  someway,  she  went  to  crying. 

The  Chinese  women  understood  that,  if  they  did  not 
the  words,  and  one  of  them  climbed  over  into  Alice's 
boat.  She  peered  closely  into  her  face  and  patted  the 


i46  ALICE'S  DOINGS. 

little  girl  on  the  shoulder.  Then  she  said  something 
in  Chinese  to  the  other  women. 

They  tied  Alice's  boat  to  their  own,  and  then  rowed 
on,  towing  her.  The  two  women  in  the  first  boat 
began  their  queer  song  again,  and  the  woman  in  Alice's 
boat  sang,  too. 

But  the  tune  zigzagged  up  and  down,  and  see-sawed 
so,  and  was  so  sung  through  the  women's  noses  that 
if  Alice  had  not  been  in  such  distress  she  would 
have  laughed.  As  it  was,  she  saved  the  laugh  till 
afterwards. 

The  women  towed  Alice  back  to  the  Chinese  village, 
and  there  the  news  of  her  arrival  spread  through  the 
huts.  Dirty-faced  Chinese  children  peeped  out  to  see 
her,  little  dogs  barked,  and  Chinamen  old  and  young 
stood  around,  their  queues  coiled  up  on  their  heads 
or  hanging  at  their  heels,  and  queer  pipes  in  their 
mouths. 

"  Thank  you  very  much,"  said  Alice  to  the  women. 
"  I  know  the  way  now.  Good-by !  "  and  the  tired  little 
girl  turned  her  steps  homeward. 

But    the  woman   who    had    been   in    the   boat   with 


ALICE'S  DOINGS.  147 

Alice  had  gone  to  a  house  from  which  a  Chinaman 
now  stepped  out. 

"  Me  go  home  with  you.  Take  you  to  papa  and 
mamma.  Me  know  where  you  live,"  he  said,  and  lo, 
it  was  Ah  Wo. 

So,  as  the  fog  was  very  thick,  and  Alice  was  not 
really  sure  that  she  could  find  her  house,  Ah  Wo 
guided  her  across  the  fields  and  by  the  bluffs  to  the 
four-roomed  house  where  there  had  been  such  commo- 
tion for  the  last  few  hours. 

Ah  Wo  rapped  at  the  door  and  received  a  very 
warm  welcome. 

"  They  brought  me  home  in  a  boat,"  sobbed  the 
returned  voyager,  overcome  with  her  adventures, 
"and  I"- 

"  Lil'  gal  on  water.  Heap  tired.  Alice  lite  to- 
mollow,"  broke  in  Ah  Wo.  "  Sing  Loo  find  her.  Sing 
Loo  my  wife." 

After  which  lucid  explanation,  and  after  being  duly 
rewarded  by  Alice's  father,  the  Chinaman  departed 
through  the  fog. 

But    the    four-roomed    cottage   was    a   place    where 


1 48  ALICE'S  DOINGS. 

Ah  Wo's  baskets  often  stopped  after  that.  And  lit- 
tle Yat  lost  his  bashfulness,  and  became  such  a 
successful  trader  at  that  house  that  his  lamenta- 
tions were  loud  and  his  anguish  grievous  to  behold 
on  the  day  when  Alice  and  her  folks  left  for  their 
homeward  journey. 


CHAPTER   VII. 


A   TALK. 


THE  members  of  the  Look-About  Club  found  their 
note-books  to  be  very  useful.  Every  new  fact  they 
observed  was  jotted  down,  and  before  the  year  ended 
those  books  contained  answers  to  all  of  the  questions 
on  the  list  that  Mr.  Perry  had 
given  Al  at  the  beginning  of 
the  season.  The  question 
about  the  Triton  had  been  sat- 

TRITON. 

isfactorily  solved  by  Blanche, 

who  brought  home  one  of  those  creatures  from  a 
dredging  expedition.  The  children  used  cloth  in  their 
dredgers  this  year,  instead  of  mosquito-bar,  and  they 
found  it  a  great  improvement,  since  numerous  larvae 
of  water  creatures  that  had  formerly  slipped  through 
the  meshes  of  the  dredgers  now  came  up  for  the  inspec- 
tion of  the  curious. 

149 


A    TALK. 


The  answer  to  the  question  about  the  kind  of  larvae 
that  come  from  the  eggs  of  the  water-boatman  was  a 
great  puzzle  to  all  the  children.  Long  and  anxiously 

did  they  look  in  their 
dredgers  and  persistently 
did  they  keep  creatures 
that  turned  out  to  be 
May-fly  larvae,  or  dragon- 
fly larvae,  instead  of  be- 
coming water-boatmen. 
There  was  a  jar  of  these 

full-grown  bugs  in  the  yard,  however,  and  one  spring 
day  Al  found  some  of  their  white  eggs  laid  in  rows  on 
a  stick  in  that  bottle. 

"  Now  we  shall  find  out  what  the  larvae  are,"  said 
Al,  as  he  pried  out  the  stick  and  put  it  in  a  little 
bottle. 

But  great  was  his  amazement  when  those  eggs 
were  fifteen  days  old,  to  see  issue  from  one  a  little  bug 
that  swam  on  its  back  and  looked  exactly  like  the  full- 
grown  water-boatmen,  only  it  was  so  very  small. 

"  Papa's  fooled  us,"  cried  Al,  as  Blanche  and  Kittie 


A    TALK.  151 

made  their  appearance.  "  There  are  no  water-boatmen 
larvae  at  all.  The  babies  look  just  like  their  mammas." 

"Isn't  he  cunning!  Let's  carry  him  to  papa,"  said 
Kittie,  and  the  three  ran  into  the  house. 

"  We've  found  you  out,"  cried  they,  as  they  dis- 
covered Mr.  Perry,  sitting  by  Al's  blackboard.  "  Our 
boatman's  egg  has  hatched,  and  it's  nothing  but  a  lit- 
tle black-and-white  bug." 

"  May  I  add  something  to  your  blackboard  ?  "  asked 
Mr.  Perry,  as  he  turned  to  the  corner  where  the  seven 
divisions  of  the  insects  were  still  illustrated  by  Al's 
pictures. 

"Why,  of  course,"  said  Al;  and,  taking  up  the  chalk, 
his     father     wrote 
opposite    Coleop- 
tera,      Lepidoptera, 
Hymenoptera    and  orrr 

Diptera,  the  words, 

"Transformation  complete;"  while  opposite  Orthop- 
tera  and  Hemiptera  he  wrote,  "  Transformation  partial; " 
and  opposite  Neuroptera,  "  Transformation  either  com- 
plete or  partial." 


1 52  A    TALK. 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  that,  papa  ?  "  asked  Kittie. 
"Well,"  said  her  father,  "if  an  insect  goes  through 
the  three  stages  of  larva,  pupa  and  perfect  insect,  then 
that  insect  is  said  to  have  a  complete  transformation, 
because,  you  see,  it  has  completely  changed  its  shape ; 
just  as  a  bee  is  for  five  or  six  days  a  little  white  larva, 
then  goes  to  sleep,  and  finally  conies  out  as  a  queen, 
a  worker,  or  a  drone  bee.  But  all  insects  do  not  have 
to  go  through  such  changes.  The  squash  bugs  do  not, 
you  know.  The  little  bugs  look  nearly  like  the  older 
ones  in  shape.  So  do  your  little  scorpion  bugs,  and 
your  Ploteres,  and  the  grasshoppers  and  crickets,  and 
these  little  water-boatmen." 

"  And  will  this  baby  boatman  grow  till  he  becomes 
a  big  one? "  asked  Blanche.  "  I  thought 
bugs  didn't  grow." 

"  Beetles  do  not,"  said  her  father.  "  After 
an  insect  passes  through  a  perfect  transfor- 
mation, it  is  done,  but  your  water-boatman  is  not 
finished.'' 

"  Oh !    I    know  what  you   mean  by  those   little  Plo- 
teres,"  cried   Al.      "  Why,  I've   seen  swarms   of  them 


A    TALK. 


153 


among  those  weeds  and  on  the  water  at  the  brook, 
only  I  never  thought  what  they  were.  They  grow  to 
be  those  big  Ploteres  --  those  '  water-skaters/  of  course." 

"  Yes ;  and  you  know  we  have 
found  little  scorpion  bugs  that 
looked  just  like  the  big  ones,"  said 
Kittie ;  "  and  they  caught  mosquito 
wrigglers  and  killed  them,  just  the 
way  that  the  big  scorpion  bugs  catch 
other  bugs.  Why,  it's  easier  to 
study  insects  that  look  alike,  little 
and  big,  than  it  is  to  study  those  that  look  so  dif- 
ferent when  they're  larvae  from  what  they  do  when 
they're  done,  isn't  it?" 

"  I  found  a  picture  of  some  of  the  relatives  of  our 
Ploteres  the  other  day,"  said  Al,  holding  out  his  note- 
book to  show  the  insect.  "  It  is  a  bug  called  Halo- 
bates,  and  it  lives  in  the  open  sea  hundreds  of  miles 
from  land.  The  book  I  read  about  the  Halobates  in 
said  that  they  are  found  in  the  Atlantic,  Indian  and 
Pacific  oceans,  and  in  the  China  Sea,  and  they  never 
come  to  land,  but  run  about  on  top  of  the  ocean  near 


I54  A    TALK. 

the  equator,  and  people  can  look  out  of  the  ship  and 
see  ever  so  many  of  these  bugs  sometimes,  of  all  sizes." 

"  Did  the  book  you  read  that  in  tell  you  what  the 
Halobates  does  with  its  eggs?"  asked  Mr.  Perry. 

"  No,  sir,"  said  Al.     "  What  does  it  do  with  them  ?  " 

"It  carries  them  around  attached  to  its  body,"  said 
Mr.  Perry. 

"Papa,"  said  Kittie  despairingly,  "after  all,  I  don't 
understand.  What  is  the  difference  between  a  beetle 
and  a  bug  ?  " 

"  Well,"  said  her  father,  "  you  can  often  tell  the  two 
apart  by  the  shape  of  the  mouth.  In  the  bugs  there 
is  a  beak-like  sucking  mouth,  and  the  creature,  whether 
water-boatman,  or  ranatra,  or  scorpion  bug,  will  run 
this  beak  into  its  prey  and  suck  out  the  juice.  True 
beetles,  you  know,  have  mandibles  with  which  they 
chew  their  food.  Then  beetles  have  horny  outside 
wings,  or  elytra,  as  they  are  called,  and  thin  under- 
wings  suitable  for  flying,  while  the  bugs,  or  Hemiptera, 
often  have  fore-wings  that  are  somewhat  leathery ;  and, 
in  some,  the  wings  are  thicker  next  the  body  than  on 
the  tips.  Bugs  often  have  their  heads  sunken  into 


A    TALK. 


155 


their  bodies,  and  the  larvae  and  pupae  look  almost  like 
their  parents,  as  we  have  said,  only  the  children  want 
the  wings  of  the  adults.  The  wings  grow  gradually." 

"  Did  you  see  Alice's  last  letter,  papa  ?  "  asked 
Kittie.  She  had  just  then  caught  a  glimpse  of  its 
envelope  sticking  out  of  her  work-basket. 


RANATRA   ASIATICA. 
(Red-brown.) 


"  No,  I  believe  I  did  not,"  said  her  father.  "  What 
did  she  say  ?  " 

And  so  the  letter  was  brought  and  read  aloud.  It 
contained  an  account  of  Alice's  attempts  at  raising 
Hydrophilidae  larvae,  and  afterward  she  said : 

"  Uncle  Frank  says  he  wishes  he  had  belonged  to 


156  A    TALK. 

a  Look-About  Club  when  he  was  a  little  boy.  I  asked 
him  why,  and  he  said  because  then  he  would  know 
some  things  that  he  wants  to,  now.  He  said  that 
when  he  went  to  school  the  teacher  used  to  have  a 
class  in  zoology,  and  a  good  many  of  the  boys  used  to 
bring  the  teacher  bugs  and  caterpillars  and  butterflies, 
and  he  told  them  about  them ;  but  Uncle  Frank  didn't 
listen,  because  he  didn't  care  about  such  things.  But 
now  he  has  a  big  fruit-ranch,  and  he  says  it  takes  him 
all  his  time  to  learn  which  bugs  are  his  friends  and 
which  are  his  enemies ;  for  both  kinds  come  to  look  at 
his  trees.  And  for  a  while  he  didn't  know  that  the 
lady-bugs  were  his  friends,  and  he  went  and  killed  ever 
so  many  of  them.  He  says  he's  real  sorry  now,  for 
maybe  those  lady-bugs  were  worth  as  much  as  -a  dollar 
apiece  to  him.  And  so  I  told  him  about  the  mantis 
that  I  had.  He  said  he  wouldn't  kill  anything  like 
that  that  came  around  his  ranch,  but  he  thought  that 
mantes  were  not  found  very  often.  And  he's  going  to 
hire  me  to  find  out  things  about  the  bugs  that  come 
to  see  his  fruit-orchard.  He  says  he  wants  to  know 
whether  he  shall  invite  them  to  stay  or  not.  And 


A    TALK. 


157 


papa's  bought  me  a  big  book.  It's  Packard's  Guide 
to  the  Study  of  Insects.  It  has  ever  so  many  pict- 
ures in  it,  but  the  reading  is  real  hard  for  me  to  under- 
stand yet.  Papa  says,  though,  that  he  will  help  me 
to  understand  it;  and  then  I'll  teach  Uncle  Frank,  and 
he  will  pay  me  for  '  bug-lessons,'  as  he  calls  them." 

"  So  Alice  is  going  to  get  rich  out  of  the  Look- 
About  Club,  is  she  ?  " 
said  Mr.  Perry,  after  he 
read  this.  "  Well,  there 
is  a  useful  side  to  such 
a  club,  and  I  pity  any 
farmer  who  doesn't 


GREAT   SHIELDED  GRASSHOPPER. 


know  all  the  bugs  that 

come  to  see  him.     Didn't  you  have  another  picture  in 

that  note-book  of  yours,  Al  ?     Seems  to  me  I  caught 

sight  of   one  when    you    showed    me    Halobates   just 

now." 

"Yes,  sir,"  said   Al,  pulling  out  his  note-book  once 

more. 

"  It's  a  picture  of  the  kind  of  ranatra  that  lives  in 
Asia.     I  found  the  picture,  the  other  day,  and  I  thought 


i58  A    TALK. 

that  I  would  copy  it  so  as  to  try  and  remember  the  dif- 
ference between  the  kind  of  ranatra  we  find  here  and 
the  kind  that  lives  in  Asia.  The  book  I  took  that 

from  said  that  the  Asiatic  ranatra  is  a  sort 

of  red-brown  color." 

"  And  here  is  another  picture,"  said  Mr. 

Perry,  turning  over  a  few  pages.     "  What's 

this  ?  ' 

„  Qh ,  that.s  ^  ^etch  of  the  'Great 
Shielded  Grasshopper,' '  said  Al.  "  I  was  reading 
Wallace's  Malay  Archipelago  the  other  day- -I  got  it 
out  of  the  free  library --and  I  found  that  picture  in  it. 
Just  think  of  seeing  a  grasshopper  flying  that  meas- 
ures more  than  nine  inches  across  the  wings  !  It  looks 
like  some  leaves,  when  it  is  sitting  still,  for  its  wings 
are  green  and  veined.  It  lives  in  New  Guinea." 

"And  what  is  this — -a  shell?"  asked   Kittie,  looking 

over  her  father's  shoulder. 

i 
"  O,  no  !  "  said  Al ;  "  that's  a  spiracle." 

"  And  what   is  a  spiracle?"  asked  Kittie.     "You've 
got  ahead  of  me  in  studying." 

"A  spiracle  is  a  breathing-hole,  such  as  a  caterpillar 


A    TALK. 


159 


has  on  its  sides,"  said  Al.  "  Haven't  you  seen  them 
on  smooth  caterpillars  ?  They're  those  rows  of  spots 
on  the  sides,  marked  with  black,  or  red,  or  yellow, 
or  brown." 

"  And  are  those  breathing-holes  ? "  asked  Kittie. 
"  Why,  I  never  should  have  suspected  it." 

"  Yes,"  said  her  father.  "  Those  spiracles  connect 
with  the  tracheae,  or  air-tubes,  and  are  guarded  usually 
by  two  little  valves.  One  valve  protects  the  outer 
opening,  and  then  there  is  a  second  valve  a  little  fur- 
ther inside." 

"  But,  papa,"  said  Kittie,  "  those  insects  that  live  in 
the  water  b reathe differ- 
ently;  for  don't  you  re- 
member our  little  Ag- 
rion  dragon  -  fly  larva 
had  leaf-like  things,  and 
you  said  they  were  to 
help  them  breathe." 

"  Yes,"  said  her  father ;  "  those  were  false  gills,  or 
branchiae,  and  they  gathered  the  air  from  the  water 
and  took  it  to  the  tracheae.  Then  the  larvae  of  the 


i6o 


A    TALK. 


PUPA  OF  ERISTALIS. 
"RAT-TAILED  FLY." 


1  rat-tailed '  flies  have  another  queer  way  of  breathing. 

Did  you  ever  find  a  picture  of  their  larvae  ?  "  and,  rising, 

Mr.  Perry  found  a  book  and  brought  it  to  his  chair. 

"  There,  he  said,  pointing  to  a 
picture  "  that  is  a  breathing-tube 
of  the  larva.  It  is  a  sort  of  tel- 
escoping tube,  being  really  two 
tubes,  one  of  which  shuts  into  the 
other,  so  that  the  larva  can  make 

its  tube  longer  or  shorter  according  to  the  depth  of  the 

water.     Once  a  celebrated   naturalist,  Reaumur,  tried 

some   experiments    with    such 

larvae.      He    caught    some   and 

put  them  into  a  basin  of  water. 

There  they  all  stood  parallel  to 

one  another,  keeping  themselves 

in   a  perpendicular  position, 

their  breathing-tubes  running  up 

just  to  the  surface  of  the  water. 

Reaumur  then  began  to  deepen  the  water.     The  tails  of 

the  maggots  lengthened,  till  those  tubes,  which  at  first 

had  been  only  two  inches  long,  had  become  five." 


A  SPECIES   OF   HELOPH1LUS. 


A    TALK.  161 

"  Do  they  live  in  the  water  till  they  become  flies  ?  " 
asked  Blanche. 

"  No,"  said  her  father ;  "  they  come  out  of  the  water 
and  bury  themselves  in  the  ground,  and  their  bodies 
become  shorter  and  harder.  Then  they  are  pupae  ;  and 
they  have  four  little  horns  apiece,  to  breathe  through. 
When  the  perfect  flies  come  out,  they  begin  to  fly 
around  flowers  and  scoop  up  the  pollen  with  their 
maxillae.  You  can  see  many  such  flies  around  flowers 
in  the  spring-time." 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

THE   CLUB'S    STORY    NIGHT. 

IT  was  "  Story  Night "  with  the  Look-About  Club. 
Once  in  every  two  months  the  members  had  a  meet- 
ing, at  which  each  person  was  expected  to  recite  some 
story  about  some  animal  that  he  or  she  had  read  of 
in  books  or  heard  of  from  some  reliable  person. 

Grandmamma  was  the  first  to  recite,  as  usual,  she 
being  the  "  head  scholar,"  as  Al  said.  She  had  a  story 
that  she  remembered  having  read  long  before  in  Eng- 
lish history. 

"  It  is  a  story  about  a  cat,"  said  Grandmamma,  as 
she  drew  off  her  spectacles  and  shut  her  eyes  to  rest 
them. 

"  Then  listen,  Mrs.  White-head,  listen,"  said  Blanche, 
shaking  the  big  cat  that  lay  purring  sleepily  on  the 
mat  before  the  fire.  "  Hear  what  a  smart  thing  a  cat 

did  once." 

162 


THE   CLUB'S  STORY  NIGHT.  163 

But  Mrs.  White-head  evidently  cared  more  for  her 
sleep  than  she  did  for  all  the  honorable  deeds  that  the 
whole  race  of  cats  might  have  done,  and,  after  blinking 
her  eyes  solemnly  at  Blanche,  she  closed  them  again 
and  the  purring  recommenced,  while  Grandmamma 
went  on  with  her  story. 

"  Many  years  ago,"  said  she,  "  there  lived  in  England 
a  man  who  might  have  said,  as  did  the  prophet,  so 
many  hundreds  of  years  before :  '  I  called  upon  thy 
name,  O  Lord,  out  of  the  low  dungeon. 

" '  Thou  drewest  near  in  the  day  that  I  called  upon 
thee ;  thou  saidst,  Fear  not.' 

"  No  doubt  these  words  of  the  prophet  Jeremiah  and 
his  experiences  in  the  *  dungeon  of  Malchiah,  that  was 
in  the  court  of  the  prison,'  have  been  remembered  by 
many  of  God's  people,  when  they,  like  the  prophet, 
have  suffered  imprisonment  for  conscience's  sake. 

"  This  man  in  England  was  called  Sir  Henry  Wyatt, 
and  he  lived  in  those  troubled  days  when  the  English 
people  for  almost  six  years  had  been  divided  into 
the  two  parties  of  the  Red  and  the  White  Roses,  and 
when  much  of  hatred  and  fighting  and  bloodshed 


1 64  THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT. 

was  attached  to  the  parties  that  wore  these  different 
flowers. 

"  Sir  Henry  himself  was  a  Red  Rose,  and  so  he  had 
to  bid  farewell  to  the  meadows  of  his  County  of  Kent, 
between  the  River  Thames  and  the  Strait  of  Dover,  in 
the  southeast  part  of  England,  and  allow  himself  to  be 
taken  by  his  enemies  to  prison.  And  in  this  County 
of  Kent,  the  very  county  that  had  been  in  early  days 
the  first  in  England  to  receive  the  gospel  of  good-will 
to  men --the  county  that  men  call  the  'garden  of  Eng- 
land,' for  the  beauty  of  its  green  meadows --there  were 
cruel  things  being  done,  as  poor  Sir  Henry  found  out. 
He  was  taken  to  the  '  cold  and  narrow  tower,'  where, 
the  historian  tells  us,  he  was  imprisoned. 

"  In  his  cell  he  had  not  even  a  bed  to  lie  down  on, 
and,  to  add  to  his  discomfort,  as  the  clothes  left  him 
were  not  thick  enough  to  protect  him,  he  suffered 
much  in  that  chilly  place  from  the  cold.  But  the  worst 
thing  of  all  was  that,  like  the  other  prisoners,  he  was 
almost  starved.  He  had  no  '  meat  for  his  mouth,' 
as  one  writer  says.  And  he  had  no  'Ebed-Melech, 
the  Ethiopian  '  to  go  before  the  king,  as  had  Jeremiah, 


THE   CLUB'S  STORY  NIGHT.  165 

and   say,  'He   is   like   to    die  for  hunger  in  the  place 
where  he  is.' 

"  But  if  there  was  no  human  being  to  help  him, 
God  could  send  a  message  by  an  animal  as  well.  One 
day  when  Sir  Henry  was  sad  enough  in  his  prison, 
thinking,  perhaps,  of  his  own  unhappy  fate,  and  that 
of  his  country  of  England,  and  wondering  if  peace 
would  ever  come  again  and  men  would  know  that  a 
throne  was  not  worth  the 
shedding  of  the  blood  of  so 
many  men,  something  came  ~ 
softly  stepping  into  his  cell. 
Sir  Henry  had  a  visitor. 

"  It  was  a  cat,  and  a  friendly  one,  too ;  for  when  Sir 
Henry,  pleased  at  the  sight  of  any  living  thing,  petted 
her,  she  allowed  him  to  take  her  up  in  his  arms,  and 
her  soft  fur  felt  very  warm  and  comfortable  to  the 
chilled  man.  But,  by  and  by,  when  Pussy  thought 
she  had  stayed  long  enough,  she  jumped  down,  slipped 
out  at  the  door,  and  went  away,  and  Sir  Henry  was 
left  alone  once  more.  No  doubt  he  felt  lonelier  than 
ever;  but  he  had  treated  Pussy  so  kindly  that  she  felt 


THE    DAILY    VISITOR. 


166  THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT. 

V 

like  making  him  another  visit,  and  so  she  did,  until 
it  came  to  be  a  regular  thing  for  the  cat  to  make  a 
daily  visit  to  his  cell. 

"  But  her  company,  pleasant  as  it  was,  did  not  pre- 
vent Sir  Henry  from  suffering  greatly  with  cold  and 
hunger.  Whether  Pussy  noticed  how  thin  her  friend 
was  becoming,  or  not,  she  one  day  brought  a  present 
with  her  for  Sir  Henry.  '  He  had  starved  there,'  says 
the  old  recorder,  '  had  not  God,  who  sent  a  crow  to 
feed  his  prophet,  sent  this,  His  and  his  country's 
martyr,  a  cat  both  to  feed  and  warm  him/  Pussy  had 
done  the  latter,  and  now  she  brought  something  to 
eat.  It  was  a  pigeon  that  she  had  caught. 

"  Sir  Henry  was  very  glad  when  he  saw  Pussy's 
present.  No  doubt  he  felt  as  Elijah  did  when  he 
received  his  first  meal  from  the  ravens.  Probably 
pussy  thought  the  pigeon  was  all  ready  for  eating ; 
but  Sir  Henry  could  not,  like  the  cat,  eat  the  bird 
unless  it  was  cooked.  He  did  not  know  what  the 
jailer  would  say,  so  he  complained  to  him  of  the  cold 
and  of  the  scanty  fare. 

"  *  I  dare  not  better  it,'  said  the  man. 


THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT. 


167 


A    FRIEND    IN    NEED. 


" '  But,'  said  Sir  Henry,  '  if  I  can  provide  any  will 
you  promise  to  dress  it  for  me  ? ' 

" '  I  may  well  enough,'  said  the  jailer,  who  knew 
how  very  unlikely  it  was  that  a  man  in  Sir  Henry's 
condition,  shut  up  by  his  ene- 
mies, should  have  any  way 
of  obtaining  food  from  out- 
side of  the  prison.  '  You  are 
safe  for  that  matter,'  added  he. 

"  But  Sir  Henry  wanted  a 
definite  promise  from  the  man,  and  after  a  little  urging, 
the  jailer  consented  to  bind  himself  to  certainly  cook 
anything  that  Sir  Henry  might  be  able  to  get.  No 
doubt  the  man  wondered  much  over  the  first  pigeon, 
but  he  might  have  had  a  chance  to  see  the  cat  a  num- 
ber of  times  afterwards  bringing  other  pigeons  to  Sir 
Henry.  He  was  very  grateful  indeed,  and  probably 
praised  Pussy  so  much  that  she  understood  that  she 
brought  presents  that  her  kind  friend  greatly  valued. 

"  At  any  rate,  she  did  not  eat  the  birds  herself,  and 
the  jailer,  who  must  have  been  inwardly  kind-hearted, 
although  afraid  to  do  anything  openly  for  the  prisoner, 


1 68  THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT. 

because  it  might  be  heard  of  by  the  White  Roses,  yet 
kept  his  promise,  and  from  time  to  time  prepared  such 
pigeons  as  the  cat  brought. 

"  And  Sir  Henry  was  saved  from  starvation.  At 
last  the  day  came  when  the  prison  doors  were  opened, 
and  he  came  out,  a  free  man  once  more.  But,  in  after 
years,  when  prosperity  came  to  him,  when  he  lived  in 
his  castle  at  Allington,  Kent,  and  saw  the  Red  Roses 
triumph  at  last,  and  Henry  the  Seventh  come  to  the 
throne  to  be  the  kingly  friend  of  the  son,  Sir  Thomas 
Wyatt;  when  riches  and  honor  were  his,  then  Sir 
Henry  did  not  forget  the  humble,  four-footed  friend 
that  God  had  sent  to  visit  him  in  the 
days  when  he  was  a  poor  starving  pris- 
oner. For  her  sake  Sir  Henry  was  kind 
to  all  cats,  and  they  always  found  in  him 
a  benefactor.  '  Perhaps  you  shall  not  find 
his  picture  anywhere,'  says  the  old  chronicle,  '  but  with 
a  cat  beside  him.' ' 

"Do  you  hear  that,  Mrs.  White-head?"  asked  Al, 
twitching  that  person's  ear  gently.  "  Behold  what 
wonderful  deeds  your  ancestors  did  ! " 


MRS.   WHITE- 
HEAD. 


THE   CLUB'S  STORY  NIGHT.  169 

But  Mrs.  White-head  was    suddenly  reminded   that 
there  was  probably  a  saucer  of  milk  waiting  for  her  in 
the  kitchen,  and   she   rose  and  departed  in  haste,  re- 
gardless  of   the    respect   due 
the  club.  ^^^^! 

"  I  think  Sir  Henry  ought     ^= 

i  i  ,1         i  c    i  ii  "REGARDLESS  OF  RESPECT." 

to  have  been  thankful  to  the 

pigeons,  too,"  said  Kittie.  "  It  was  a  good  deal  more 
of  a  sacrifice  for  them  to  be  eaten,  than  it  was  for  that 
cat  to  go  and  catch  them.  Sir  Henry  ought  to  have 
had  a  pigeon  with  him  in  his  pictures,  as  well  as  a  cat." 
"  That  reminds  me  of  a  queer  Jewish  legend  about 
pigeons,  that  I  once  heard,"  said  Aunt  Nan.  "It  was 
thought  that  the  waters  of  the  flood  in  the  time  of 
Noah  were  hot,  and  this  legend  said  that  the  dove  that 
Noah  sent  out  of  the  ark  scalded  her  feet  so  that 
feathers  never  grew  on  her  legs  any  more,  and  so  the 
Jews  said  that  all  those  doves  nowadays  that  have  red 
and  featherless  legs  are  the  descendants  of  Noah's 
dove." 

«• 

"Where  is  Mrs.  Jameson's  Legends  of  the  Monastic 
Orders?"  said  Mr.  Perry,  rising  and  going  over  to  the 


1 7o  THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT. 

bookcase.  "  I  saw  a  legend  in  that  about  doves,  the 
other  day,"  and,  finding  the  book,  he  turned  rapidly 
over  the  leaves  till  he  came  to  the  chapter  on  St. 
Nicholas  of  Tolentino.  Then  he  read  aloud : 

"  It  is  related  of  this  St.  Nicholas  that  he  never 
tasted  animal  food.  In  his  last  illness,  when  weak 
and  wasted  from  inanition,  his  brethren  brought  him 
a  dish  of  doves  to  restore  his  strength.  The  saint  re- 
proved them,  and,  painfully  raising  himself  on  his 
couch,  stretched  his  hand  over  the  doves,  whereupon 
they  rose  from  the  dish  and  flew  away." 

"  After  they  had  been  cooked  ?  "  said  Kittie.  "  What 
nonsense ! " 

"  There's  another  legend  farther  over,  about  St. 
Francis  of  Assisi  and  the  doves,"  said  Aunt  Nan,  and 
Mr.  Perry,  having  found  the  place,  read  this  legend, 
also: 

"  Of  all  living  creatures  he  seems  to  have  loved 
especially  birds  of  every  kind,  as  being  the  most  un- 
earthly in  their  nature ;  and  among  birds  he  loved  best 
the  dove.  One  day  he  met  on  his  road  a  young  man 
on  his  way  to  Siena  to  sell  some  doves  which  he  had 


THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT.  171 

caught  in  a  snare ;  and  Francis  said  to  him,  '  O,  good 
young  man  !  these  are  the  birds  to  whom  the  Scripture 
compares  those  who  are  pure  and  faithful  before  God; 
do  not  kill  them,  I  beseech  thee,  but  give  them  rather 
to  me; '  and,  when  they  were  given  to  him,  he  put  them 
in  his  bosom  and  carried  them  to  his  convent  at  Ravac- 
ciano,  where  he  made  for  them  nests,  and  fed  them 
every  day,  until  they  became  so  tame  as  to  eat  from 
his  hand." 

"  Now  read  us  his  sermon  to  the  birds,"  said  Mrs. 
Perry,  "  and  then  I  think  we  shall  have  had  enough  of 
St.  Francis  and  his  legends." 

So  Mr.  Perry  read  this  other  story  of  Sir  Francis : 
"  Drawing  nigh  to  Bevagna,  he  came  to  a  certain 
place  where  birds  of  different  kinds  were  gathered  to- 
gether ;  whom  seeing,  the  man  of  God  ran  hastily  to 
the  spot,  and,  saluting  them  as  if  they  had  been  his 
fellows  in  reason  (while  they  all  turned  and  bent  their 
heads  in  attentive  expectation),  he  admonished  them, 
saying,  '  Brother  birds,  greatly  are  ye  bound  to  praise 
the  Creator,  who  clotheth  you  with  feathers,  and  giveth 
you  wings  to  fly  with,  and  a  purer  air  to  breathe,  and 


i/2  THE   CLUB'S   S'lORY  NIGHT. 

who  careth  for  you,  who  have  so  little  care  for  your- 
selves.' Whilst  he  thus  spake,  the  little  birds,  mar- 
velously  commoved,  began  to  spread  their  wings, 
stretch  forth  their  necks,  and  open  their  beaks,  atten- 
tively gazing  upon  him,  and  he,  glowing  in  the  spirit, 
passed  through  the  midst  of  them,  and  even  touched 
them  with  his  robe ;  yet  not  one  stirred  from  his  place 
until  the  man  of  God  gave  them  leave ;  when,  with  his 
blessing,  they  all  flew  away.  These  things  saw  his 
companions,  who  waited  for  him  on  the  road ;  to  whom 
returning,  the  simple  and  pure-minded  man  began 
greatly  to  blame  himself  for  having  never  hitherto 
preached  to  the  birds." 

"  Well,  I  think  we've  had  enough  nonsense,"  said 
Mrs.  Perry,  "  let  us  hear  Aunt  Nan's  story." 

"  My  story  resembles  Grandmamma's  somewhat," 
said  Aunt  Nan,  "  in  having  an  animal  help  a  prisoner, 
only  my  animal  is  a  beetle  instead  of  a  cat.  One  day, 
nearly  a  hundred  years  ago,  in  the  old  French  seaport 
town  of  Bordeaux,  there  was  a  little  stir  in  a  certain 
dark  corner,  and  a  beetle  walked  out  to  take  its  first 
look  at  the  world.  There  was  nothing  to  indicate  that 


THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT.  173 

this  was  to  be  a  specially  remarkable  beetle,  and  yet  it 
had  quite  a  work  to  do.  Not  the  ordinary  work  of 
such  insects,  however  important  that  may  be,  but  the 
principal  life-work  of  this  beetle  was  to  save  a  man 
from  death.  Perhaps  when  King  David  in  his  psalm 
called  upon  all  '  creeping  things  '  to  '  praise  the  Lord 
from  the  earth,'  he  may  not  have  thought  especially  of 
beetles,  yet  this  little  insect  was  to  be  the  cause  of 
much  thanksgiving. 

"  The  house  under  which  this  beetle  had  its  home 
was  a  prison,  known  as  the  Grande  Seminaire,  and,  in 
one  of  the  cells  of  the  prison,  was  the  man  that  was  to 
be  rescued  by  the  beetle.  His  name  was  Pierre  La- 
treille.  Little  had  he  dreamed  as  the  cart  that  bore 
him  and  his  companions  to  prison  creaked  along  the 
road  to  Bordeaux,  that  he  should  ever  live  to  be  free 
again  in  his  native  land.  For  those  were  evil  days  in 
France.  Even  the  good-natured,  honest  king  himself, 
poor  Louis  the  Sixteenth,  was  powerless  to  shield  his 
wife  and  children  from  the  fury  of  the  French  people. 
The  royal  family  were  already  in  danger,  and  the  in- 
iquities of  the  two  previous  Louises  were  being  visited 


i74  THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT. 

on  their  comparatively  innocent  descendants.  All  of 
the  nobility  and  clergy  who  refused  to  take  their  oath 
on  the  new  constitution  were  thrown  into  prison,  and 
it  was  for  this  reason  that  Pierre  Latreille  and  his 
companions  had  been  imprisoned  at  Bordeaux. 

"  It  is  s'mall  wonder  that  Pierre  was  sad  as  he  sat 
in  his  prison-cell  with  no  one  to  keep  him  company 
but  an  old,  sick  bishop.  No  doubt  Latreille  often 
thought,  during  the  dreary  prison  days,  of  his  past 
life,  his  young  boyhood  in  his  native  town  of  Brive,  in 
the  rich  plain  by  the  River  Correze.  His  family  had 
been  poor,  though  distinguished,  and  Pierre  himself 
owed  his  education  to  the  kindness  of  friends. 

"  One  of  these,  a  merchant,  lent  him  some  books  on 
natural  history,  and  it  was  from  reading  these  that 
Pierre  first  came  to  love  the  study  of  insects.  When 
he  was  sixteen  he  was  sent  to  Paris,  and  there  studied 
theology,  but  upon  his  return  to  his  native  town,  he 
began  the  study  of  insects  again  with  great  zeal.  He 
had  even  published  some  of  his  discoveries  about  in- 
sects, and  now,  to  all  appearance,  this  study  must 
come  to  an  end. 


THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT.  ,75 

"  Out  in  the  harbor  of  Bordeaux,  ships  were  making 
ready  to  take  the  prisoners  away  from  France.  They 
were  condemned  to  exile  in  South  America.  Still  the 
prisons  were  emptied  slowly,  and  although  it  was  June 
when  Latreille  was  first  taken  to  Bordeaux,  yet  the 
days  and  months  crept  by,  and  still  he  lived  within  the 
Grande  Seminaire.  The  little  beetle  lived  there,  too, 
although  the  prisoners  did  not  know  it. 

"  One  day  a  surgeon  came  to  see  the  old  bishop  in 
Latreille's  cell.  The  prison  authorities  had  allowed  the 
surgeon  to  come  daily  and  dress  the  wounds  of  this 
aged  man.  This  particular  day,  while  the  surgeon  was 
in  the  cell,  the  little  beetle  came  out  of  a  crack  in  the 
boards  and  crawled  into  the  room.  Latreille,  looking 
around,  spied  the  beetle,  caught  it,  and  began  to  exam- 
ine it.  He  seemed  so  .happy  over  his  discovery  that 
the  surgeon  looked  up  and  said,  '  Is  it  a  rare  insect?' 

" '  Yes,'  said  Latreille,  who  knew,  from  his  previous 
studies,  that  it  must  be  so. 

"'In  that  case  you  should  give  it  to  me,'  said  the 
surgeon  ;  and  he  went  on  to  explain  to  Latreille  that 
he  had  a  friend  who  had  a  fine  collection  of  insects, 


i;6  THE   CLUB'S  STORY  NIGHT. 

and  who  would  probably  be  much  pleased  to  receive  a 
rare  one. 

"  So  Latreille  gave  up  his  beetle  to  the  surgeon,  and 
told  him  to  carry  it  to  his  friend,  and  to  be  sure  and 
ask  him  the  name  of  it. 

"  But  when,  the  next  day,  the  surgeon  made  his  visit 
to  the  cell,  he  brought  the  news  that  his  friend  had 
looked  at  the  beetle,  and  had  given  it  as  his  opinion 
that  this  was  a  new  kind  of  insect  that  had  never  been 
described.  Latreille  rejoiced  at  this  answer,  not  so 
much  because  of  the  discovery  of  a  new  beetle,  as  be- 
cause the  word  brought  back  showed  that  the  surgeon's 
friend  was  indeed  a  learned  man. 

"  'In  that  case,'  thought  Latreille  to  himself,  '  he  has 
probably  read  my  book,  and  will  be  friendly  toward 
me.' 

"  So,  as  Latreille  had  neither  pen  nor  paper  to  write 
a  note,  he  begged  the  surgeon  to  go  once  more  to  his 
friend,  whose  name  was  Bory  de  Saint  Vincent,  and 
tell  him  who  the  prisoner  who  had  sent  the  beetle  was, 
and  say  that  this  prisoner  was  about  to  be  sent  to 
Guiana  to  die  there  as  a  convict. 


THE   CLUB'S    STORY  NIGHT.  i;7 

"  The  surgeon  faithfully  delivered  the  message,  and 
as  soon  as  his  friend  heard  it,  he  immediately  set 
about  trying  to  have  Latreille  released,  for  he  recog- 
nized his  name  as  one  of  the  scientific  names  of 
France. 

"  Meantime,  the  prison-ship  was  making  ready  in 
the  harbor.  The  prisoners  went  on  board,  but  La- 
treille was  not  among  them,  for  vigorous  efforts  were 
being  made  in  his  behalf.  The  ship  at  last  set  sail, 
but  it  was  never  to  reach  the  South  American  coast. 
The  vessel  foundered  before  it  was  out  of  the  Bay  of 
Biscay,  and  every  prisoner  on  board  was  drowned. 
No  wonder  that  Latreille,  afterwards,  in  one  of  his 
great  entomological  works,  when  describing  the  kind 
of  beetle  that  he  found  in  his  cell,  and  speaking  of  it 
under  its  scientific  name  of  Necrobia  ruficollis,  calls  it 
'  an  insect  very  dear  to  me,  for  in  those  disastrous 
times,  when  France  groaned  tremulously  under  the 
weight  of  endless  calamities,  this  little  animal  was  the 
miraculous  cause  of  my  liberty  and  safety.' 

"  After  this  providential  escape,  Latreille's  friends 
were  so  far  successful  that  he  was  permitted  to  come 


1 78  THE   CLUB'S   STORY  NIGHT. 

out  of  prison  as  a  convalescent,  although  it  was  stipu- 
lated that  he  was  to  be  delivered  up  whenever  the 
authorities  wanted  him.  After  a  time,  however,  his 
friends  managed  to  have  his  name  taken  off  from  the 
list  of  those  who  were  to  be  exiled ;  and  so,  though 
even  King  Louis  himself  was  put  to  death  by  the 
furious  French  people,  yet  this  man  was  saved  to 
become  the  '  Prince  of  Entomology,'  as  he  was  sur- 
named.  But  although  he  was  one  of  the  greatest 
scientific  men  of  France,  and  published  numerous 
works  on  his  favorite  study,  and  became  Professor  of 
Zoology  in  the  Museum  of  Natural  History  in  Paris, 
yet  he  never  forgot  his  miraculous  deliverance;  and 
after  his  death  an  obelisk  raised  to  his  memory  at 
Pere-la-Chaise,  had  engraved  on  it  a  large  figure  of 
the  little  beetle  that  had  been  guided  by  a  Divine  hand 
to  visit  his  particular  prison  cell  and  become  the  means 
of  his  deliverance  from  death." 


Y 


.'•*' 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


NON-RENEWABLE 


MAY  1  9   997 


DUE  2  WKS  FROM  DATE  RECEIVED 

UCLA  URL/ILL 


-• 


A  "••«  inn  lllll  I 

000051  719 


